Janos The Story Of A Doctor

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(LIBRARY)

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I

JANOS,
THE STORY OF /

DOCTOR

JANOS,

THE STORY OF A DOCTOR

by

JOHN PLESCH

Translated by

EDWARD FITZGERALD

LONDON

VICTOR GOLLANGZ LTD

1947

Copyright 1947 byjolm Plcsch

TO MELANIE
MY BELOVED WIFE

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY AND COMPANY, LTD.,
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

SCIENCE, POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES

Chapter I.

Before We Start

page 1 1

II.

Budapest

24

III.

The Student Pilgrim

37

IV.

Strassburg and Berlin

61

V.

The Practical Years

79

VI.

Schaudinn, Wassermann and Ehrlich

84

VII.

World War Number One

100

VIII.

The Failure of the Republic

no

IX.

A Centre of Art and Letters

123

X.

The Two Rathenaus, Rantzau and Russia

*37

XI.

A Herrenahend

148

XII.

The Inflation

*53

XIII.

Journalism in Germany

J63

XIV.

Princes of the Church

168

XV.

Wilhelm II

*75

XVI.

Princess Marie Radziwill

283

XVII.

The Diplomatic World

188

XVIII.

Einstein

200

XIX.

Einstein’s Career

218

XX.

Fritz Haber, Ehrenfest, Joffd and Others

227

XXI.

The Baltic States, Finland and Russia

237

5

Contents

PART TWO

THE THEATRE, ART, MUSIC AND ENGLAND

Chapter 1 . Sixty Years in the Stalls page 261

11 . The Stage. Its Critics and Its Finances 269

III. Reinhardt’s Theatre 276

IV. More Reinhardt 285

V. Salzburg 295

VI. Elizabeth Bergner 299

VII. Gerhart Hauptmann 301

VIII. David Oliver, Lubitsch, Marlene, Sternberg,

Pascal and Korda 307

IX. Liszt, Thoman and the Hungarians 322

X. Ki'eisler, Hubermann and Menuhin 333

XI, Toscanini, Furtwaengler, Richard Strauss, Bruno

Walter and Fritz Busch 349

XII. Singers and their Art 360

XIII. The Vyalzeva 366

XIV, Orlik, Slevogt, Liebermann and Kokoschka 371

XV. Dieffenbach and Gaul 386

XVI. I come to England 393

XVII. I go back to School 401

XVIIL Medicine in England 409

XIX. The Medical Man in England 426

XX. And finally the Englishman 432

APPENDIX

A DOCTOR’S DIALOGUES 453

Index 562

6

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Between pp. ig2-ig^

The author in 1923.

Entrance hall and staircase of the author’s Berlin house.
Bedroom of the Berlin house.

Another bedroom.

A portrait of Einstein.

The chamber musician, Albert Einstein.

Stage design by Slevogt for a production of ‘‘Don Giovanni”
Self-portrait by Max Liebermann.

Self-portrait etching by Slevogt.

Self-portrait by Orlik,

Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk, 1918.

Portrait of Matthias Erzberger.

Gerhart Hauptmann reading his own works.

Orlik poster for Hauptmann’s “Die Weber”.

Portrait "of Bronislav Huberman.

Ibsen in front of the Cafe Maximilian, Munich.

Cartoon of Ibsen.

Gustav Mahler.

Richard Strauss.

Between pp,

A Slevogt menu card.

Fritz Kreisler.

Metamorphosis during a concert.

List of Illustrations

Lunatscharsky,

Alfred Kerr at a rehearsal.

Rehearsal at the Deutsches Theater. Reinhardt, Hauptmann,
Rilke and Frau Hauptmann.

Max Reinhardt.

Sketches of Max.

Oskar Kokoschka producing his own play.

Portrait by Rembrandt of his so-called “Sister’’.

“Goupeuse d’Ongle” by Rembrandt.

South front of Haus Hainerberg.

The same, used by the Nazis as a postage stamp.

Haus Hainerberg, northwest terrace.

Haus Hainerberg, lounge and dining-room.

The family portrait by Slevogt.

Einstein with Honoria Margot, Odilo Andrew and Peter Hariolf
on the author’s estate.

The author in his home near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

8

PART ONE

SCIENCE, POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES

CHAPTER I

BEFORE WE START

It is natural curiosity, I feel, to want to know rather more
about a man with whom you have to deal than just whatever
happens to appear on the surface. It is understandable curiosity
too, because to know more means to understand more — I hope.
And as I am anxious to establish a rather personal relationship
with my readers it is as well that they should know quite a lot
about me before we start.

I don’t want to go too far back, but the etymology of my
name, as explained to me once by the distinguished Orientalist
Becker, at one time Prussian Minister for Education, is inter-
esting, and offers a convenient starting point. ‘Telesch”, he
believed, meant ‘‘the stranger”. “The strangers”, driven from
the East to the West, found a home in Palestine (Peleschtina) .
A dropped “e”, and there I am, the stranger — but one who
subsequendy found himself at home in many lands.

Five thousand years is a long time. It was long enough for my
ancestors to find their way to Bohemia. How, I really don’t
know. But coming down to more recent years I do know that
both sides of my family wandered back into Hungary, My
maternal grandfather and his three sons were all doctors, and on
my father’s side a Bamberger, my great uncle, was one of the
pioneers of the Vienna medical school. It may well be therefore
that some sort of hereditary bent played a part in making me
a doctor.

A certain wanderlust was very evident on the maternal side.
My mother’s family came from Alt-Ofen, a mediaeval settlement
on the Danube not far from Budapest. My grandmother, nee
Spitzer, had an uncle named Moses, an incorrigible sailor. He
won some fame in the scientific world of his day by sailing round
the world on no less than three occasions. My maternal great
grandmother came from the priestly tribe of Loewi. One
of her uncles left Alt-Ofen as the result of a pogrom, and ended
up in England, where he settled down, changed his name to
Lion, and produced the female child afterwards to go into history

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

as the notorious Lady Hamilton, who, despite, or perhaps
because of, her defiance of deep-rooted social conventions,
exercised no small influence on the history of this country.

But coming down to our own day — or yesterday — the wander-
lust was still in evidence in my family. Three of my mother*s
brothers were no home-keeping youths. The oldest went to
Egypt and then to Syria, and finally to Bucharest, where he
worked as a doctor and an exponent of the Vienna school. The
youngest went through the Bosnian campaign in 1870 as a
regimental doctor, whilst the second brother, Alexander, fought
on the side of the Turks for twenty years in all the Balkan wars,
until finally he established himself in Budapest. This uncle
played a decisive role in my life. He arrived home with a small
fortune and took over the practice of my grandfather in what
was then a smallish village known as New Pest, though his main
interest was in dentistry, which was then rapidly beginning to
take the shape we know to-day.

My brother, eighteen months older than myself, was suffering
from very severe rickets. Uncle Alexander had his own ideas
about the requisite treatment. He took the patient, and me
with him as a playmate, to New Pest, where, with the assistance
of a widowed and childless aunt of ours, and our grandmother,
he effected a cure primarily with raw meat and sun baths. That
was what the modern vitamin treatment for rickets looked like
in those early days as seen from the village of New Pest. New
Pest became practically our home, and when we visited our
parents in Buda-Pest it was more or less as guests. The result
was that I grew to regard my uncle and aunt as father and
mother, and my father and mother as uncle and aunt. My
relationship to my sisters was also more that of a cousin than a
brother. It was only when I was eleven and my parents had a
new son, introduced to me as my brother, that I began to realize
more clearly the truth of my family relationships. In any case,
when I take stock of my feelings now it is quite clear that my
uncle and aunt were nearer to me in relationship than my
mother and father.

I believe that the love of children for their parents is acquired
(the result of parental care) and not inborn, whereas the love of
parents for their children is natural and inborn. That is why, it
12

Science, Politics and Personalities

seems to me, the Commandments require that children shall
honour their parents, but deem any similar exhortation as from
parents to their children unnecessary. I have always accepted
this principle in my relationship with my own children. The
love of children must be won — and held. And I have always
done my best to win and keep it.

In my early childhood I enjoyed all the love and care at the
hands of my uncle and aunt that most children find in the home
of their parents. Owing to my uncle’s earlier affiliations, many
Turks came to our house as visitors, chiefly when they were
making their pilgrimage to the grave of Guel Baba, once
Governor of Hungary under Turkish rule and a sort of Saint
for the Moslems. In consequence, Turkish was often spoken at
home, and what I retained of it stood me in good stead later.
From my grandmother I learnt German, with the servants I
chattered in Slovakian, and from my Bucharest cousins, with
whom I was later educated, I picked up quite a smattering of
Roumanian. Our old Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was poly-
glot indeed.

My grandfather left no fund of scientific or medical knowledge
behind him, but quite a lot of poetry, which my mother was
accustomed to recite on suitable occasions right into her
declining years.

My paternal great grandfather felt no attraction for science
or medicine. He went in for brewing, and from very small
beginnings he made a very good thing out of it, and afterwards
used much of his quite considerable fortune to found a number
of charitable institutions and establish the first Freemasons’
Lodge in Hungary. All of which appears to have contributed
greatly to his popularity, for I can even remember an inn called
‘‘The Good Old Plesch”. It was whilst living in this inn that
Carl Goldmark composed his famous opera “The Queen of
Sheba”, whose music is largely based on Hungarian folk-song
motives. As so often happens, the old gentleman’s sons played
skittles with his fortune, and when it came to my father’s turn
it was more a case of saving what was still to be saved. This he
did, and more, for he succeeded in building up the business
again. He was a man of some capacity, but his bent was
towards art and literature rather than business, and when he

13

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

died, which he did at the early age of 53, he could at least feel
with satisfaction that there was little he had missed in life.

As I have said, I grew up in New Pest as the playmate of my
older brother, and when he went to school I went with him,
more for the fun of the thing, and to be with him, than anything
else. Educational institutions were rather different in those days.
In the upshot I remained with him throughout our whole
school period, and for twelve years, right through to the Uni-
versity, I shared the same school-bench and learned from the
same books. I was not yet five when I first went to school, and
in consequence I missed some of the joys of childhood. I am not
in favour of sending children to school too early. The sixth or
even seventh year is quite soon enough. It is a very difficult
matter to teach a child book knowledge before then. In my
case, I missed quite a deal of playtime by my ambition not to
lag behind the others, who were all much older than I was. It
meant very hard work for me to keep up with boys eighteen
months older, and the unequal struggle went on well into high
school.

What little free time I had was devoted to music. The
organist of the village church had taught me to play the piano.
He not only taught me the elements of music, but through him
I learned to love it. When I look back now he appears to me,
above all, as a paragon of patience. By the time I was nine years
old I was accepted by the Budapest Conservatorium, and I was,
already able to play a number of classical compositions — after
a fashion.

I retain very vivid memories of this patriarchal life in what
was, after all, little more than a primitive Balkan State just
awakening to modern civilization and culture. Many things
made an unforgettable impression on me. For instance, the
introduction of lump sugar, henceforth making it unnecessary
for the cook to go for the sugar-loaf with a hatchet, I remember,
too, my introduction to the automatic swing door. At the
first Hungarian National Exhibition in Budapest in 1885 it
left me dazed and with a bump the size of a pigeon’s egg on my
forehead. The first sight of the electric glow-lamp was awe-
inspiring. The replacement of the old tallow dip by the stearine
candle and of the primitive oil-can burner by the round wick
14

Science^ Politics and Personalities

had been impressive enough, but this was revolutionary. How-
ever, as far as we were concerned, practical lighting technique
really emerged from its swaddling clothes when the swallow-tail
gas-jet gave way to the incandescent gas-mantle. The electric
arc-lamp was still too unreliable for general adoption. The
gas-mantle, however, revolutionized our night-life.

And then there was the first electric train. It is difiicult to
imagine now the almost mystical awe it inspired. The peasants
fell on their knees at the sight, crossed themselves and prayed
hurriedly against, the evil spirit that threatened the world,
whose end was now quite obviously in sight. It took a long time,
before they could be persuaded to climb into an infernal
contraption which moved without visible assistance from any
method of locomotion they were acquainted with.

I remember the first penny-farthing, too. It took a very
agile man to mount the thing successfully and wobble away.
The next step was the transmitter wheel — and the constantly
punctured pneumatic tyres. And then came the motor-car.
But in the beginning that was a joke. Horses had to pull it
home too often for the public to take it seriously, and the
laughter was loud and mocking. When the aeroplane arrived
it was a serious matter from the first. It had to pass through no
stage of mockery.

The Hungary L knew flowed with milk and honey like the
land of Canaan. Its people were poor in possessions, but no
man went short of food. A dozen eggs cost lo kreutzer, a young
roasting chicken cost from 12 to 15, a pound of bacon about the
same, and so on. 100 kreutzer was a florin, and a florin was
about IS. 6 d. To encourage travelling, Baross, the Minister for
Transport, introduced the zone system permitting ticket-
holders to travel twenty-four hours along the longest track in
the country for 4 florins. High-School fees were 10 florins a
year. The half-year term at the University cost 30 florins, and
an industrious pupil of promise could enrol even without that
small payment if his means were insufficient to meet it.

For giving supplementary help to backward students I
earned about 10 florins a month, and that was amply sufficient
to pay for theatre and concert visits, though in the gallery, of
course. You could stand for 20 kreutzer and sit for 40. For a

15

Jdnos, The Story of a Doctor

florin in those days you could get into the promenade parquet of
the Vienna Opera House,

Educational facilities were cheap and readily available,
perhaps too much so, because they produced a dissatisfied
intellectual proletariat, which whilst it contributed much as a
living ferment to contemporary development, was always an
element of unrest and disturbance.

I entered the world of artistic creation for the first time when,
as a child, I was permitted to help actively in the maldng of
hussars and peasant girls out of dough in a neighbouring
bakehouse. A further stage in the process permitted me to
decorate cheeks, lips and top-boots with a red and sugary
pigment. In the local choir a lusty voice, I earned lo kreutzer
every Sunday. But all these innocent pleasures came to an end
when we had to go back to town in order to go to High School,
Hungary was culturally backward, and the standard of
education was low. My teachers were themselves wretchedly
educated and trained, and, what was very much worse, their
attitude to their pupils was hopelessly wrong. They seemed to
think that the best way to control their classes was by harshness
and severity and an unapproachable reserve. There was no
attempt to treat a pupil as an individual and no understanding
for individual characteristics. In those days the educational
system was in the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities, and
therefore great importance was attached to religious and
classical subjects, whilst the natural sciences were very much
neglected. This was particularly so in the Catholic High School
in which I was educated.

History was completely emasculated, and, in particular, all
mention of any movement or rebellion for freedom was sternly
expunged. And with good reason, for the Habsburgs were
right in regarding their Hungarian subjects as potential rebels.
Hungarian children were not to be encouraged in that direction,
not even by the knowledge of indisputable historical facts.
Libertarian ideals were to be banished even from the imagina-
tion. The result of this suppression was, as one might have
expected, exactly the contrary. Adorned with the national
cockade, we met together secretly to brood over immature
plans for freeing Hungary from Habsburg tyranny. However,

i6

Science^ Politics and Personalities

nothing very serious resulted from these youthful conspiraciesj
though somewhere around 1890 it was decided at one such
conventicle that all signs in German should disappear from the
streets, and then, whilst the Hungarian police looked the other
way, bands of youthful patriots roamed around painting out
every German sign they came across. This went on for about a
fortnight, by the end of which time Budapest had been
thoroughly Magyarized. This rise of nationalism met inevitably
with repression, and so the game went on. But from a game it
became deadly earnest, and it ended only with the dissolution
of the Habsburg monarchy.

Both sides did everything they could to exploit the high
spirits of youth, and young people were drawn into the struggle
and brought up in a spirit of party and national hatred, and
taught every mean trick of the political struggle. The unsteady
torch of propaganda rather than the clear flame of truth lit our
path, and every cunning device and distortion was practised to
keep us from discovering the truth for ourselves. Even the fine
and noble melody of Haydn was misused and exploited in the
interests of political hatred and spite. In Germany it was
Deutschland^ Deutschland ueber Alles, whilst it also served as
the National Hymn of the Austrians, Gott erhalte Franz den
Kaiser^ and in all the subject countries of the Austrian double
monarchy the tune was hated as a symbol of Habsburg tyranny.
But when it was played in public everyone had to stand up.

One day in a cafe we youngsters persuaded the gypsy band to
play patriotic Hungarian melodies in order to annoy a group of
Austrian officers. We succeeded, and they then insisted that
the band should play Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser^ to the
playing of which we had to stand up. But we made a secret
collection for the ^igeunerprimas and handed it over with the
instruction that he should keep on playing the hymn, which he
did. The result was that although we had to stand up the whole
time and were unable to chatter and drink, the officers had to
stand to attention. The joke was on them, and they got tired of
it before we did and took themselves off leaving us victors in the
field.

To be brought up in false ideals is a dangerous thing for an
adolescent. The soul is then in the formative stage and the first

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

strong impressions it receives are indelible. They can be
overlaid later, but never completely erased. If every possible
other merit of Freud and Adler were one day denied them, just
one thing would have to remain as a lasting service: they
revealed and explained the soul of the child.

Hatred was, I am afraid, injected into us as children, one
might almost say from the cradle on. Hatred is a tremendous
source of potential energy. Evil influences have always ex-
ploited it, though certainly never so deliberately, systematically
and brutally as the Nazis have done in our day, but it was
bad enough when I was a boy. The pretexts for stirring up
hatred were then much the same: religious, racial, national
or social; forces which have again and again been invoked
throughout world history by those eager for power. And always,
whether consciously or unconsciously, they have been used as
means to a selfish end. Against it all there is one, and one only,
effective means : love. Love, the formal opposite of hate, and its
true antidote.

When I look back now I see that I lived in an atmosphere of
race hatred. Every national group under the Habsburg double
monarchy was anxious to retain its own narrow and circum-
scribed existence. Throughout Europe national groups were
striving to establish national States. Italy became nationally
united, and so did Germany. Serbia, Bulgaria and Roumania
were founded in this same period. Pan-Slavism, Pan-German-
ism and Italia irredenta flourished. The unification of national
groups was the one aim. The idea of internationalism hardly
existed.

But internationalism is not a new idea; indeed, it has long
existed in many harmless, unconscious and naive forms.
Soldiery were often international, and although two countries
might be at war with each other neither thought of prohibiting
the sale of goods to the other. And that rather happy-go-lucky
attitude existed until Napoleon, the great apostle of modern
nationalism, thought of instituting the continental blockade of
England. There was even an international language — Latin.
Of course, this embryonic internationalism was very far re-
moved from what we mean to-day by the term. There is more
than a grain of truth in the paradoxical contention of H. G.

i8

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Wells that nationalism was much stronger in the years that led
up to the two world wars than it was during their course.

The thirst for knowledge was growing in Hungary. There
were never fewer than sixty pupils in a class. The teachers hardly
knew the individual pupils. Each pupil was called upon not
more than two or three times in a whole term, and his answers
were used to establish a rough sort of classification. Our
teachers got up to all sorts of tricks in order that we should not
be able to calculate when we were likely to be called on. With
professional sadism they developed a technique for picking on
those who were least prepared. The sigh of relief of fifty-nine
pupils when the sixtieth was called upon was almost audible.
The nervous anxiety of the whole class until it became clear who
was to be the victim seemed to satisfy some sadistic lust in our
teachers. And of justice there was very little. Favouritism was
rife, and the sons of rich or influential fathers were privileged.
Arbitrary treatment of this kind left its mark. Small wonder
then that I have no very pleasant memories of my schooldays.
And I never looked back at them with any regret for their
passing. On the contrary, the eight years of fear and anxiety
they represented have never gone entirely from my memory,
and I have suffered them again in nightmares even as an
adult.

And the worst torture of all was the matric. Only a subaltern,
sadistic and malicious stupidity can explain why this wretched
mediaeval institution still exists. ^‘Why should they be any
better off than we were?” And, indeed, the whole institution is
grossly stupid. After eight years, a teacher, if he’s worth his salt
at all, should know without need for examination just where
each of his pupils stands. The fate of young people ought not
to depend on the results of one examination, on the chance
Jesuits of a momentary situation. Up to the eighteenth year
examinations, indeed, education altogether, have no more than
a hypothetical value. It is throughout his High-School period
that a youngster experiences the most difficult stage of
adolescence. More than at any other time in his life he is the
product of his glandular activity. Not only his character but
also his intellectual capacity is subject to great variations. The
youngster is fighting his way through to manhood ; the girl to

19

Jdnos, The Story of a Doctor

womanhood. This is the period in which the sexual character
begins finally to differentiate.

To-day it is beyond all question that every individual is made
up of a double sexuality. The Wolf rnale organ and the female
Mueller organ develop parallel in the embryo until the decisive
stage of differentiation is reached and the one organ dominates
the other, and determines the future sex of the individual. But
this does not mean that the opposing sex organ is completely
obliterated. Far from it; it experiences a rudimentary further
development. So much so that throughout life a rivalry exists
between the two sexes in the same individual, and this is true
not only of physical characteristics, but of character itself. To
adopt the arithmetic of Weininger, in every individual there
can be a minimum of his particular sex to the extent of 5 1 % and
a maximum of the other sex of 49% or a maximum of 99% of
his particular sex and a minimum of the other sex of i %, so that
there are various degrees of man-woman and woman-man.

The development of the secondary sexual characteristics
demonstrates the differentiation individually. But just as
anatomically the continued existence of contrary physical
sexual characteristics is beyond all question, so also the psycho-
logical and mental make-up of the individual is a mixture of
both sexual characteristics. Without going into the character-
istic duality of the masochistically-stressed feminine and the
sadistically-stressed masculine, it is true, and, indeed, beyond
all question, to say that the mental development of the female
sex is much quicker than that of the male sex and therefore stops
earlier, whilst the mental development of the male sex goes
more slowly, and less irregularly. Moebius has spoken of what
he calls ‘‘the physiological mental weakness of woman”.
It would be a gross misinterpretation to conclude from this that
woman is a priori something intellectually inferior, and therefor^^
incapable of intellectual competition with man. That is cer-
tainly not what is meant. In every-day life and for the average
demands of a profession or occupation man and woman are
equally valuable and equally useful. The difference is visible in
peak performances, and then there is hardly a field in which
woman has outdistanced the male.

It would be an infamous injustice to prevent women from,
20

Science^ Politics and Personalities

having their say in public affairs or their part in public life.
Without doubt there are many talented women who put the
majority of men in the shade, women whose social and political
judgment is much sounder than that of those male rivals whose
right to exercise judgment in public affairs is derived purely
from their sex, whilst talented women are forced to silence
merely because they are women. The rivalry of the sexes con-
tinues in our own day. But when all the arguments for and
against have been heard, one truth at least stands unshakable :
masculine intellectual development is slower than female. And
this is a fact which should exercise greater influence on the
educational field than it has done up to the present.

The classification which goes on in the schools according to
intellectual abilities may be more or less right for the age in
question, but it is totally unsuited as a basis for judgment on the
future development of the pupils and their usefulness in life.
The final classification will often be quite the contrary. If
the careers of the more feminine model pupils who top the
classes are followed, then rarely do they subsequently rise above
the average, whilst the more masculine pupils, the despised, the
frivolous, the lazy-bones, the plague of all teachers, those who
often scrape through their examinations thanks only to extra
consideration and allowances, are often those who later set up
the peak performances.

Of the two hundred-odd pupils of the same class, if of different
schools, whose subsequent careers I have been in a position to
follow, only very few did anything of note. Two became
Ministers of State, others became higher civil servants, useful
lawyers, doctors and engineers. But in the best case their repu-
tation hardly went beyond the frontiers. But there was one, a
quiet lad who never did anyone any harm, and took part in
games, etc., only in order not to be a spoil-sport. He was always
neat and clean, with a fresh Eton collar and a dark brown velvet
jacket. The covers of his books were always wrapped in blue
paper to save them from being soiled, his writing was always
clean and legible and he never came late to school. At the first
pause he would take out his sandwiches and eat them, and he
would never use his school satchel to hit some unsuspecting
playmate over the head as so many others did. Yes, he was a

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

very good boy was Franz Neumann, the son of a regimental
doctor. Later on he began to study law, but he wrote a short
story which attracted the attention of the newspaper editor
Josef Veszi by its humour and originality. Veszi recognized
genius at once and he sent the young man to Paris with in-
structions to write back to the paper about his impressions and
generally about anything else that came into his head. That was
the beginning of the successful literary career of Franz Molnar.

He later became the patron of Budapest’s night life, the centre
of a cheerful Bohemia, the source of a certain species of capri-
cious wit, good humour, laughter and light-hearted living.
Franz Neumann-Molnar’s plays have won him world fame and
reputation. But they represent only a small part of his contri-
bution to gaiety. He is a never-ending fount of humour, witty
ideas, bon mots^ epigrams and ludicrous but keen observation,
and those around him are to be envied their privilege. A wit
and a jester by the grace of God, His masterpiece is ‘‘Liliom”,
in which, in a legendary form, he cloaks an apologia of his
unsuccessful marriage with the highly- talented Margit Veszi.
He is now in New York, where it is to be hoped he will find
new inspiration.

One evening rather late I dropped in on him. He was about
to go to bed. He went. As he took off his slippers before
turning in I noticed that he did neither of the two things
ordinary mortals do: either kick them off anyhow or place
them neatly side by side. Franz Molnar placed them neatly
toe to toe. I watched the performance in silence, but when he
was finally in bed and comfortable I could not suppress my
curiosity. There was usually some good reason for Molnar’s
oddities.

‘‘What’s the idea, Franz?”

“Oh, that?” he said. “Well, look, Janos, if you put them side
by side both staring straight ahead they remind me for all the
world of a married couple who’ve just had words. I don’t like
it. It depresses me. But see how friendly they look nose to nose.
They look so happy they cheer me up and I sleep better.”

I laughed — but I found the idea somehow compelling. Since
then my slippers always present the same contented picture.
But back to my grouse :

2i3

Science, Politics and Personalities

The fatal cancer of our educational system is its over-
formalization. The task of the school (apart from giving the
child a happy youth and sending him out into the world with
pleasant memories) is to prepare a boy — or girl — to take his
proper place in adult society. He must, amongst other things,
be taught to discipline and, if necessary, sacrifice himself in
the interests of society as a whole. I expect a lot from a long-
overdue educational reform : everything that I was not given
in my youth. I don’t know, of course, how my life would have
developed if I had enjoyed a reasonable schooling, but I do
know quite certainly that whatever good I may have achieved
in the course of my life was in no way due to whatever it was my
schooling gave me on the way.

However, since those days schooling has, in fact, made
enormous strides, but, despite that, backward Hungary of sixty
years ago might well serve as a horrible example to be taken to
heart by many institutions extant to-day, not only in still back-
ward countries, but, for instance, both in Germany and in
England, and for this reason I have taken some space here to
deal with what was perhaps in many respects the most decisive
period of my life — my schooldays.

I had no difficulties with the choice of a profession. I grew up
amongst doctors, and from my earliest childhood I never had
any other idea but to become a doctor myself. A hundred years
ago there were no doctors in our sense of the word, and the
training of doctors was more or less limited to the performance
of such services as were likely to be required in the field. This
significance has been clearly retained in the German word
Feldscher. As a result surgery was greatly favoured, and
purely surgical schools were to be found in most progressive
countries. It was only later that they developed into medical
faculties. Thus in Austria the pioneer work for the modern
School of Medicine was done by the Josephinum”, the ^
Vienna Military Academy; in Germany it was the Pepiniere,
and in France the Salpetriere. Up to the outbreak of the first
world war Russia had no proper university medical faculty, only
a military academy of medicine. Schiller was the son of a
Feldscher, and was entered as a pupil of the Wuertemberg
military medical school. Most of our present-day faculties

23

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

can be traced back to such origins. It was only about a hundred
years ago that the professional status of the doctor was raised by
the introduction of examinations and the presentation of
diplomas. Special diplomas were given for surgery, obstetrics
and ophthalmias, in addition to general practical medicine.
However, that was facultative. Soon afterwards this specializa-
tion ceased and a medical man had to take an examination in
all subjects, for which — if he passed — he received the sonorous
title of ‘‘Doctor of all Degrees”, or Medicim Universe Doktor,
Whilst there was always a lively interest in the materials out
of which life was composed, and whilst the study of anatomy
was already far advanced, interest in the interaction of these
basic elements, interest in their actual function, developed only
comparatively late in the day, and it was left for the past
hundred years or so to extend our knowledge of the relations
between individual organs. With the development of mechanics,
electricity, optics, chemistry and bacteriology problems arose
which gradually dominated the whole outlook of the civilized
world. This was the atmosphere in which I was born, and the
world in which I began my studies of medicine.

CHAPTER II

BUDAPEST

As I WRITE these lines the wireless announces that my beloved
Budapest has been battered, plundered and set on fire by the
barbarian malice of German troops, and my thoughts wander
back to the home of my childhood, old Budapest. In those days
I saw it with very different eyes, of course, but after I had lived
and travelled abroad for many years and then returned there, it
became clear to me that both ethnographically and culturally it
represented a sort of water-shed between Asia and Europe. A
glance into old Buda on Saint Stephen’s Day was enough.
Masses of people from all parts of the country made the pil-
grimage to Buda to gaze in awe at the Holy Hungarian
Stephen’s Grown. They came in their tens of thousands, and it
must have been clear to every objective eye that Europe stopped
here and Asia began.

24

Science^ Politics and Personalities

There sat the peasants in their sheepskin cloaks and their tall
pointed fur hats, a garb that served them just as well against
the biting cold of the winter as against the burning sun of the
Hungarian puszta in summer. Their long black hair shone with
fat and their moustaches either twirled up to points or hung
down around the lips in a half-circle as in the classic statue of the
dying Persian. They kept themselves clean according to their
lights, but they certainly didn’t know what a bath was. The
women sat next to their lords and masters like docile slaves.
The wealth of their men was demonstrated by their clothing.
The richer they were, the greater the number of richly worked
petticoats they would wear, and the finer the material: one
petticoat worn over the other until in the end they almost
stood out straight like boards. Over their heads and crossed over
their breasts were gaily coloured kerchiefs, and on solemn
occasions such as this all their rich silver ornaments hung from
ears and neck. The finishing touch to this holiday finery was
given by beautifully made top boots of red saffian leather.

On the streets and in the squares of old Buda on such days
the traditional goulasck simmered and bubbled appetizingly
in great cauldrons, and the famous smoked garlic sausage and
the paprika bacon was present in great quantities. The
tarisznja, or shoulder satchel, of the peasant held all his
immediate needs, and the hunk of paprika bacon was always
amongst them. Most of them slept either in their peasant carts
or in barns and outbuildings. On such days old Buda looked as
though it had suffered an invasion straight from the Persian
plateau or from South Tibet. These people were little touched
by modern civilization and its achievements, and with open
mouths and round eyes they would gather and stare at any new
evidence of it.

It was in these days that Budapest (as the contiguous towns
were soon called) began to imitate Western European culture.
The shining example was Vienna. Means of transport generally
were extremely primitive in Budapest, but despite the lack of
almost everything else, there had to be an underground railway.
It must be one of the oldest in Europe, and it extends no farther
to-day than it did on the day it was solemnly opened. Minis-
tries, public buildings, theatres and sports grounds were all

25

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

present in miniature. And like everything else, modern
governmental institutions and even a democratic constitution
were quasi in existence. The Magna Charta Libertatis of the
Hungarians dates from the thirteenth century, just like the
English, but in Hungary there has been very little further
development of the rights of the individual citizen. Everything
was there in the Hungary of my young days, but only partly
developed and in a very rudimentary form.

The Hungarians are a naively self-satisfied folk. They never
tire of telling each other that all the things they have are the
very last word in desirability. And in the end they come to
believe it themselves. But they must be given credit for one
thing at least: they did recognize the aesthetic possibilities of their
capital clustering round the proud Danube and surrounded by
fine hills. Even in the eighties there was already half a mile of
fine embankment, though only two bridges joined the two parts
of the town. Buda (Ofen) therefore developed only slowly and
remained a sort of reserve of the Swabian peasants who had
settled there in the eighteenth century. In this enclave they
retained their manners and customs, their language and their
costume almost uninfluenced by the world around them. The
inhabitant of Pest went over to Buda only as an ‘^outing”, but
later on, when the value of fresh air and sunlight became more
and more recognized, and particularly when modern means of
transport developed, this changed rapidly.

However, even after Pest had been thoroughly modernized,
Buda still remained in the Theresian period with its low-built
houses in the pleasant old Austrian baroque style, and its cosy
little inns where one could sit agreeably and drink the home-
fermented wines. There are vineyards up the sides of the Ofen
hills, and the vines yield a grand Heurigen. When we were
boys we used to go gleaning” every autumn in the vineyards
after the picking.

Completely isolated and dominating the countryside the
Schlossberg reared up beside the Danube, and on its brow stood
the Royal Palace. When I was a boy the Palace was a one-
storied building, broad, squat and yellow, something like a
barracks, with window shutters painted a Schoenbrunn green
and decorated with many small towers. Altogether it made an
26

Science^ Politics and Personalities

agreeable picture, simple and quite stately, though its relation
to the Vienna Burg was much that of a shooting-box to the
House. From time to time the Monarch would unbend suffici-
ently to take up a short residence in the Palace to visit, or rather
be visited by, his ^‘loyaP’ Hungarians. They were great days
of pomp and ceremony. Hungary’s aristocrats and notabilities
disinterred their finery, brocades trimmed with costly lace and
decorated with precious stones, and drove off in style to the
Palace either in open carriages drawn by four horses with
Pandours on the box, or riding on horseback, to present them-
selves to thfeir ruler.

The Hungarians were elegant and gallant courtiers and they
were not prepared to lag in any way behind the other aristo-
crats of the monarchy. But the most wonderful and stunning
uniforms of all were always worn by the famous military
tailor Moritz Tiller, a magnificent figure with his great red
beard, out-bearding even Kaiser Friedrich himself. By some
happy chance Tiller had become Consul-General for the
comic-opera State of San Marino, and it was therefore quite
impossible to leave him out when invitations were issued to the
Diplomatic Corps ; the European balance of power might have
been disturbed. Moritz eagerly seized every opportunity of
showing himself as the diplomat rather than the tailor, and his
workshops provided him with the most gorgeous creations his
fertile brain could design.

In the nineties the simple Palace on the hill became the scene
of tremendous extension and rebuilding, and the Palace
garden and the Bastei were included in the architectural
plans. The very difficult artistic task was very happily solved
by the architect Nicholas Ybl, who also designed the Hungarian
parliament, which was executed by the architect Alois Hansmann.
With the extension of the grand quay, the sweep of Budapest
along the Danube could be equalled in magnificence by very
few towns indeed. But behind this imposing metropolitan
fagade everything was rather meanly provincial, asiatic-
proletarian, drab and half-finished. It was part and parcel of
the character of the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy to take
the plan for the finished article. For instance, the old classic
National Theatre was pulled down as not big enough, and

27

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

grandiose plans for a new one were drafted, but down to this day
they have never been carried into execution. The same fate
befell the old Town Hall. They demolished a beautiful
baroque building of modest proportions to make way for a
modern monumental building. Whilst demolition and building
work were proceeding the Town Council was accommodated in
the old Karfs Barracks, But the new Town Hall was never
completed, and the Town Council is, or was, still accommodated
in the ugly, gloomy old barracks.

A stroll through the representative corso of the town gives
the stranger no idea of the Balkan conditions which still
exist in all the side turnings. Architectural and domestic culture
in Budapest has remained very backward, and in consequence
the native has become a boulevardier and cafe haunter. In this
respect, to^, the town is reminiscent of the East. In the mid-day
hours crowds surge through the streets of the business quarter,
high and low rubbing 'shoulders democratically. The men dis-
cuss politics and the women display their finery. The gossip of
both men and women can immediately be illustrated by its
living object, for everybody who is anybody is there. Members
of parliament, actors and other incorrigible exhibitionists are
present in force. In Budapest the man must be seen. Publicity
demands that its subject shall appear in all public places of
amusement. Budapest has theatres, cabarets and music-halls
in large numbers and to suit all tastes. An inborn zest for
pleasure and gaiety and an equally inborn laziness of your true
Budapester combine to keep them all going most profitably.
The stranger falls a willing victim to the undeniable charm of
this town and its life, and there are few visitors whose eyes do
not glisten with pleasure as they recall the times they spent there,
the beautiful women, the full-bodied wines, the picturesque
gypsies who played the money out of their pockets, and the gay
and light-hearted atmosphere of all the night places of amuse-
ment. Your real Budapester begins to wake up when the Lon-
doner, and even the Parisian, is thinking of going to bed.

But behind this gay and often brilliant fagade there are
extremes of poverty that neither Paris nor London knows.
The social structure of the country is primitive. Despite many
valiant efforts, despite the insurrections under Rakoczy and
28

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Kossuth, and despite the nominal freedom and the democratic-
parliamentary institutions and constitution of the country,
Hungary has never kept pace with the countries of Western
Europe and still drags along its fatal heritage of social misery.
The true picture of Hungary behind the care-free fa9ade is one
of a backward and undeveloped feudal State held down by
Church and aristocracy. Social improvements and ameliora-
tions are all there on paper, but only those which leave the
interests of the ruling classes untouched have any chance
of realization. The franchise was a farce, corrupt and hypo-
critical, and in reality the poverty-stricken workers and peasants
were worse off than in many frankly absolutist countries.

The Hungarians are certainly not an untalented people, but
their education has been deliberately obstructed, whilst political
enlightenment, if such it can be called, has always been ex-
clusively in the hands of those with every interest in keeping it
down to a minimum. From the cradle the child was taught to
look back on a thousand years of history with pride and un-
questioning loyalty to the Holy Crown of Stephen. Small won-
der then that after the 1918 revolution the peasant, having
declared himself for the introduction of a republic, was
nevertheless very anxious to know who was going to be
crowned.

The greatest period of Hungarian cultural development co-
incided with my youth, approximately between 1890 and 1900,
when Alexander Wekerle managed the country’s finances,
Gabriel Baross re-organized transport, and Ignacz Daranyi
brought the economic system more into line with the rest of
Europe, whilst Count Albin Csaky re-organized the educational
system and separated Church and State — at least nominally.
But the giant of this illustrious company was undoubtedly
Desider Szilagyi, the Minister for Justice, I can see him now,
taking part in the mid-day corso on the Kronprinzenstrasse
like a perambulating barrel surrounded by his satellites, in-
cluding his Secretary of State, Geza Papp, a skinny gnome who
could have used the space between Szilagyi’s legs as a tunnel.
We students followed them at a respectful distance during the
daily stroll, feasted our eager eyes on them and doffed our caps
in respectful enthusiasm when we met them face to face. The

29

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

atmosphere of old Budapest had a sort of familiarity and
intimacy which remained to some extent even throughout its
later and more modern development. When the population
topped the million mark many, many thousands still knew each
other, and the boulevard casino still existed. Even after Buda-
pest had adapted itself to international tourist traffic it still
retained much of its old lovable character.

Budapest is a spa. Apart from the noble Danube, it has
numerous springs whose waters are suitable for the treatment
of many sicknesses and infirmities. With their genius for spas
the Romans did not fail to recognize the health-giving qualities
of Budapest and they built the magnificent Aquincum Baths
around its natural hot-water springs, and they are still in use
to-day. In addition, at various points in Buda, there are five
natural hot-water springs and mud baths for gout and rheu-
matism. At the foot of the Blocksberg there is the world-
famous Hunyady Janos bitter water spring, and on Margaret
Island there is a hot sulphur spring. Once these valuable
natural springs become really known Budapest may easily
become a world spa.

The temptation to over-eat is very great in this Hungarian
land of Canaan, so it is as well that the town has been so
liberally provided with the means to bathe and drink away
the effects. Not only is the available material of the very
highest quality, but the Hungarians are very good cooks. The
fish in the Danube are worth a chapter on their own in any
gastronomical guide, and there is no shortage of rich fodder for
the cattle, so the quality of Hungarian meat is very high, and a
roast goose in Hungary for the first time is a gastronomical
experience not to be easily forgotten, whilst the pastry cun-
ningly formed from the best Hungarian wheat is worthy of all
the lyric poems that have been made in its praise. And bene-
ficently floating over and above a wealth of rich material is
the incomparable genius locL

These reflections and pleasant memories may seem to have
carried me away and broken the thread proper of my story, but
not so : all this contributed signally to creating the atmosphere
in which I grew up — not merely as a doctor, but as a con-
noisseur of wine and food.

30

Science, Politics and Personalities

It was with a great feeling of relief that, only just sixteen
years old, I sa^y myself enrolled as a student in the Medical
Faculty of the University of Budapest. The five subsequent
years passed happily, and therefore perhaps without any
particular incident. My professors were for the most part the
product of foreign, chiefly German, universities. There was
hardly one amongst them who had done any real pioneer work
on his own account, though at that time the development of
medical science was going forward at a tremendous pace.
Generally speaking they were good, reliable sponges who had
sucked up the knowledge that others had won, and to the best
of their ability they fulfilled their schoolmasterly task of pro-
viding us with the sound basis we required. Hardly one of them
had the qualities which make the independent inquirer, but
perhaps it was just their reliable mediocrity which made them
such good teachers. Generally speaking a good teacher must
necessarily be limited. A successful teacher is the man who can
best transfer book learning to his pupils and do it in such a
fashion that they go away firmly convinced that they have
received the last word on the subject.

Without confidence no confidence can be created, and no
man of really high intelligence can have the unquestioning con-
fidence which is necessary for the good teacher. Doubt is the
fundamental principle of all inquiry. People who begin their
remarks with '^no” are irritating and unpopular, though interest-
ing. The yes-men are soothing and popular, if a trifle dull.
They are the born clubmen, and their club need not necessarily
be the Drones. The doubters are liked by the few; the yes-
men carry the masses with them. The average student is, after
all, a representative of the mass. All he wants* to learn is what
is going to be useful to him when examination time comes
round. The result is that the man who is not bothered by any
problems does better as a teacher than the sceptical genius.
Robert Koch, Svante Arrhenius, Albert Einstein and other
really great men were freed from any obligation to hold sys-
tematic courses. There is nothing more deadening to the
intellect than the constant teaching of the same thing year after
year. I remember on one occasion attending a lecture by the
economist Adolph Wagner. And in the middle of it the famous

31

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

‘‘Armchair Socialist” hesitated, lost the thread of his remarks
and finally explained apologetically :

‘Tor eighty terms now I have always told the same anecdote
at this point, but, you must forgive me, I can’t remember it for
the life of me at the moment.”

Automatic repositories of professorial wisdom are very
necessary. We should be grateful to these scientific hewers of
wood and drawers of water just as we are grateful — or are we? —
to the dockers who unload the rich products of other countries
for our benefit. However, personally I avoided all lectures
whose gist I could get out of a good book more easily and more
quickly. “Absence” from lectures was noted, so although I saw
to it that I occupied my place in the lecture hall, my time was
given to the study of literature and art, or to caricaturing the
grandiloquent poses of my teachers.

Anatomy was for me nothing but a duty to be performed,
and a blue-white cadaver cold to the touch was always some-
thing I found disagreeable, and as for fumbling around inside
it, that disgusted me. There is a current idea that suitability
for the medical profession can be measured by the indifference
or even pleasure with which the individual can devote himself
to unappetizing matters. By such standards I am not very
suitable. Corpses and excrement are as disagreeable to me to-
day as ever they were, and I have never got used to them. My
natural revulsion is overcome anew each time by my feeling
of duty.

However, I studied anatomy with great diligence, and I must
have amassed quite a considerable degree of knowledge and
skill because in my third term I was appointed a demonstrator.
The truth is, that my feverish industry was prompted by a
strong desire to escape as soon as possible from the dissecting room
with its corpses. However, I had a year of it, and what I saw
made such a deep impression on me that I have always retained
the topographical-anatomical angle even when examining the
living body. But in the first two years of my studies I could eat
no meat and I became a strict vegetarian. I lived again only
when I could turn my attention from death to the living
organism, and I have remained primarily attached to physi-
ology and physiological pathology down to this very day.

32

Science^ Politics and Personalities

It is not only death that I hate, but any form of degeneration
in life. The wonderful automatism of living phenomena with
their perfectly inter-acting parts and functions, the undisturbed
process of life without disagreeable bodily or organic feeling,
that is worth-while existence to me. Sickness and disabilities are
unworthy of life, and therefore the true doctor must be an
optimist out to do everything possible to put an end to an un-
worthy condition, to abolish sickness and cure his patient as
soon as possible. His greatest pleasure must be the sight of the
healthy person whom he has cured. The more a doctor hates
sickness the livelier will be his ambition to get rid of it, and the
more elementary will be his urge to heal. As I felt this way
from the beginning it is natural that my early medical schooling
did not altogether satisfy me; it was concentrated almost ex-
’clusively on the organ and very little attention was paid to the
organism as such.

As I have said, my teachers were good and reliable enough.
They knew everything they had themselves been taught, and
everything there was in the book. They were the expounders Oi
greater teachers, but the pioneer spirit of the greater men was
lacking. Anatomy was in the hands of Mihalkovics, a pupil
ofWaldeyer; the physiologist was F. Klug, a pupil of Ludwig;
Genersich, the pathological anatomist, was a pupil of Roki tan-
ski ; the general pathologist, Hoegyes, was a pupil of Pasteur ;
the Internist Stiller, was a pupil of Oppolzer ; the dermatologist,
Schwimmer, was a pupil of Hebra; and the ophthalmist,
Schulek, was a pupil of Graefe. Thus they were all more or less
vigorous and good products of a sound stock, only surgery and
obstetrics were in the hands of men who were themselves
pioneers : Kovacs and Kezmarszky. Kezmarszky was the direct
successor of the great Semmelweiss, himself the first successful
campaigner against child-bed fever, about twenty years before
Pasteur and Lister.

The opportunities for medical learning in Budapest were
unique. Not only did the sick of Hungary flock into the capital
for treatment, but it was the medical reservoir for the whole of
the Balkans, so that beyond a doubt there was an accumulation
of medical material in Budapest which hardly any other
university in the world could equal. A student in Budapest

Jonos^ The Story of a Doctor

could amass a wealth of experience which a junior lecturer
assistant would be lucky to meet with in other and less-fre-
quented universities, and the student in Budapest could come
by it much more quickly. As far as I was concerned, I made
good use of my student years, and I have every reason to be
thankful for everything that Budapest offered me.

I have said that the memory of my schooldays weighs on me
still like a nightmare; the same is true of my short period of
military service. At the age of eighteen I joined the Royal
and Imperial Army ( K. and K., as its initials read), and in
1896 I was sent to Infantry Regiment No. 6. The headquarters
of this regiment was in Neusatz, a town with a mixed
Serbian-Swabian population in the Banat where the Save
flows into the Danube. Thus, like so many other K. and K.
Regiments, this one, too, was a hodge-podge of nationalities, and
this applied not only to the '‘other ranks’’, but to the officers’
corps as well. The heterogeneous elements which made up the
regiment were not held together by any common idea, say
the institution of monarchy as such, or by a common patriotic
spirit. There was nothing but a vague seignorial loyalty to the
House of Habsburg and its traditions — and a common language
of command, German, to keep us together.

I don’t suppose there is any very great mental or constitu-
tional difference between the soldiers of one country and the
soldiers of another. The differences which subsequently exist
are, I take it, a matter of education and training, a matter of
the spirit in which the soldier is trained. He must be given some
idea of the reason for his being a soldier in the first place, then
he learns to use whatever his particular weapon may be and
gains confidence. He must, of course, have confidence in his
officers, too, and he must be given the possibility of acting and
thinking for himself within the limits of his own position. Only
if the soldier has some general idea of what the whole thing is
about and where he fits into the military scheme of things will
he be able to give his best. The initiative must generally come
from the officers, of course,Tor the men will not do more than is
expected of them, and be demonstrated by example.

There was nothing, literally nothing, of all these elementary
requirements present in the K. and K. Army. The soldier "did
34

Science, Politics and Personalities

his duty” purely mechanically because he was ordered to do so
and was aware that it would go ill with him if he didn’t. As far
as he had any spirit and intelligence they were suspended for his
period of service. The first thing the Austro-Hungarian soldier
was taught was not to think, but merely to do as he was told.
There was no discipline in the true sense, but slavishness and
servility, and as the punishments for the slightest offence were
extremely savage, each man went in constant fear of the man
above him. A common punishment frequently imposed for
very minor offences, for instance, failing to ‘‘jump to it smartly”,
or being unfortunate enough to drop a rifle, was six hours in
irons. Irons were placed on the right wrist and the left ankle and
joined together by a bar.

The next stage of physical punishment — still regarded as a
mild one to be imposed for comparatively trivial offences — ^was
similar to Field Punishment No. i, but much worse. The hands
and feet were bound, then a rope was passed through the bonds
and the delinquent was drawn up by means of a ring in the
wall until only his toes touched the ground. In the beginning,
when he was still fresh, the victim could manage to retain his
balance, but when he became exhausted and hung limply
the pain would become so intense as to make him lose con-
sciousness. But the K. and K. Army Punishment Regulations
were not completely inhuman : they provided for the presence
of another soldier complete with bucket of water to splash in
the victim’s face if he lost consciousness, thus restoring him to
full feeling for as long as possible throughout the period of the
punishment.

Medical students serving their term were used as far as possible
for this service, and so from time to time I found myself in the
role of second executioner. Authority was maintained in the K.
and K. Army solely by threats and fear, and recruits were let
know it from the very first day of their service, when they were
lined up before an officer who reeled off the Army Regulations
at a speed which made it impossible to understand any of it
except the last paragraph of each regulation, which was read
out more slowly and with particular emphasis so that every-
one should hear that the punishment for violation of the regu-
lation was “ execution by shooting”. It is not surprising there-

35

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

fore that the men never performed their duties with an^
pleasure or real zeal. The result was a regiment which lookec
marvellous on parade, whilst underneath the fine show wa
resentment, bitterness, hatred, contempt and a spirit of venge
fulness. A Czech humorist once wrote: ‘‘What a marvellou
army they had ! All the uniforms cleaned and pressed : all th
buttons and buckles beautifully polished ; all the movements anc
manoeuvres hit off to a And then what did they go and do
Why, packed it off to war in 1914 and spoilt the lot.”

It was indeed in war that the fatal weaknesses of such an arm’
became clearly visible. With the possible exception of th
higher staff officers the only idea of its officers’ corps wa
advancement to higher pay and pensions, and there was neithe
real interest in the profession of arms nor real enthusiasr
for the calling.

The term of service in the ranks was three years, but fc
students and others who had reached a certain examinatio
standard the period was one year only, and such recruits wei
termed the “One-Year Volunteers”, though there was nothin
voluntary about their service. We medical students did on]
six months in the ranks and then six months in a militai
hospital after the conclusion of our medical studies. I think onl
with horror of my short term of service, during which I suffere
senseless maltreatment and chicanery in the strait jacket of a
idiotically inhuman system of training. Everything was dor
for show. The whole army was little more than a decorath
and expensive plaything of his Royal and Imperial Majest
Even at manoeuvre time more attention was paid to clean tuni
and polished buttons and accoutrements than to militai
efficiency. The aim of Austro-Hungarian army training w,
to turn the men into mindless and soulless automatons, and
succeeded. To take cover in battle or to dig a defensive trem
was declared to be cowardice, and when the war did come
happened more than once in its early stages that caval
formations were hurled against prepared positions, the hors
going hell for leather, the men knee to knee, shouting hurn
and flourishing their swords whilst enemy machine-guns mow<
down men and horses like ripe corn.

When I first visited Germany in 1898 I found that the traini
3 ^

Science^ Politics and Personalities

of the German Army was not on a very much higher levels and
this remained true for some years, but, at least, the treatment
accorded to the soldiers was jus ter and more humane, and
there was a real patriotism amongst the masses, who enthusi-
astically supported both Reich and Dynasty, so that the
German soldier, conscript though he was, served willingly
and even with enthusiasm.

CHAPTER III

THE STUDENT PILGRIM

For two months in every year I was able to satisfy my thirst
for medical knowledge with the great ones of my time. This was
possible because the terms in Hungarian Universities started
and ended at different times from those in the rest of Europe
owing to the early and very hot summers of Hungary. Our
university term ended at the beginning of June, and from then
until the middle of August I was able to go off to Austria,
Germany or Italy — to any place, in short, where some great man
was at work whose reputation attracted me. For that period at
least I could sit at his feet and imbibe knowledge with youthful
enthusiasm, and let myself be inspired.

In Italy there was the tradition of Morgagni, Spalanzani and
Scarpa. First I went to Padua, which was not only the centre of
Italian medical knowledge, but possessed the further advantage
of being near Venice, whose beauties attracted me greatly,
and in particular the Ospedale Civile and the great equestrian
statue of the Condottiere by Donatello. Every afternoon in
Padua the Cafe Pedrocchi was the meeting place of the whole
medical faculty. The libertarian outlook of. Galileo and the
spirit of scientific inquiry informed the proceedings. I owe much
to the Professor of Internal Medicine de Giovanni and to the
great surgeon de Bassini, who were both at work in Padua at
the time. In Pavia Scarpa looked down on us benevolently, if
a trifle gruesomely from ajar of preserving alcohol. In Bologna
modern neurology was in process of birth. In Naples it was
bio-chemistry. In Rome one could learn both history and
internal medicine from Guido Bacelli, a leading clinical light

37

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

and a well-known excavator of the Forum Romanum. I owe
my first real introduction to physiology to Luciani. Thanks to
Lombroso and his investigations in Milan a new and fresh
breeze was blowing grandly in both psychology and psychiatry,
I received unforgettable impressions in Italy. It was a truly
romantic country then, a land of genius and a land of happy
work — and happy idleness.

If nothing else, Italy could teach a man to laze away his days,
Dolce far niente is an art like any other, and it can be learned. In
those days there were still real lazaroni in Italy. I have seen
them take a piece of chalk as they lazed in the sun, draw a circle,
cut it off into as many segments as there were interested
players sprawled around, and then put down a louse (a very
easy matter for them to find one) in the centre of the circle and
leave it to its own devices. With that the game began. The only
active player was the louse. Sooner or later the wanderlust
would seize it and it would move around inside the circle.
If it made as though to leave the circle the excitement would
rise. Perhaps it would wander out to the ring and turn back
again half-a-dozen times before it finally left the circle alto-
gether. The player through whose segment the louse at last de-
parted took the kitty. I have been an interested onlooker at
many games and competitions in my life, but I think I have
never seen anything quite like this louse gamble — not even a
parliamentary debate. It sometimes took hours before the
louse made up its mind to leave the circle.

The Italian people have a well-earned reputation as a happy-
go-lucky crowd. They are indeed, and for that I find them the
most lovable people on earth. They don’t even take their very
real talent seriously. They work happily, and because they are
capable they work easily. I have met many happily industrious
and creative Italians, but I never met one who overworked
himself. The German writer Otto Erich Hartleben always in-
sisted that activity should never degenerate into labour”, and
the Italians seem instinctively to have adopted his motto.
They are always busily occupied, but they don’t labour. And
truly, labour might be defined as something performed under
pressure or compulsion; its fruits are rather arid, too deliber-
ately obtained, a little forced and joyless. The Italian way was

33

Science^ Politics and Personalities

different; there was more talent and therefore greater ease;
the performance was more like a game or sport.

An example of the almost gay and easy attitude of the Italian
towards his science made a deep impression on me when I first
met it in Bologna. The hall of anatomy there is certainly one
of the grandest in the world; it is decorated with wood carving
which is amongst the finest art of the Cinquecento. Before the
lecturer a fine amphitheatre sweeps round. It is broken in the
centre by a sort of isolated box as in a theatre. This was the
privileged place of the pazzo^ the fool or jester, who alone
had the right to interrupt the lecturer and put questions. A
ridiculous and foolish custom? A very wise principle lay behind
this fool. The Old Testament tells us that not even the wisest
man can answer all the questions of a fool. The fool in Bologna
was the Professor’s touchstone. It was the fool who returned
the scientist to the limits of modesty and true humility if he
tended to arrogance and boastfulness. That worthy institution
has passed to-day, but not because it has outlived its usefulness.
Such a fool in our lecture halls to-day would find perhaps more
opportunities than ever before of reducing professorial
blatancy to tolerable limits.

I have lectured more than once before such 'Tools”, and I
think I learned my lesson. One odd instance stands out in
my mind. It occurred in Chicago, where I was the guest of the
Nobel Prizewinner and physiologist Carson. I don’t know to
this day how it came about, whether as thanks for past services
or in fulfilment of an obligation imposed, but university facul-
ties were accustomed to hold periodical lectures in turn in
underworld haunts, and Carson invited me to attend one of
them. The theme of the lecture was proposed by our hosts ; it
concerned the purpose and the functions of the endocrine
glands. I was asked to lecture on the thyroid gland. We set off
by car to some outlying part of the town and found ourselves in
a sort of camp of wooden huts and shanties. Our hosts provided
us with a board of real delicacies and although it was during the
period of prohibition there was plenty to drink, including the
finest liqueurs and wines, a circumstance which puzzled me,
but which I gratefully accepted without further question.

Our auditorium, which was a big barrack-like shack, was

39

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

full of the most dubious characters. There were obvious pros-
titutes of both sexes, pimps, bootleggers, hooligan types in caps
and mufHers, excessively elegant fops in top hats and wearing
carnations in their lapels, highly-bedizened bar ladies, brothel
mistresses, and so on. They were all members in good standing
of what called itself ‘‘The Mixed Pickle Club’’. And not a bad
name either. It even published its own club organ, which
carried, I remember, some very witty caricatures. The first
half of the evening was taken up by the various lectures, which
were all quite up to the usual university standard, and accom-
panied by lantern slides and prepared exhibits for demon-
stration purposes. Then came a pause during which the
assembled public discussed what they had heard. After that
the discussion began, opened by a gentleman in a check suit
sporting a carnation, who apologized for not rising and ex-
plained that he was sitting inadvertently on someone else’s
parked gum.

At first the general trend of the remarks was humorous. We
laughed and so did our hosts, and we were soon all in great
good humour. But before long the discussion became serious
and we laughed no more. The objections raised were thoroughly
sound. Our audience was not professional (at least, not in our
sense), but its level of intelligence was high and it could
obviously muster a great volume of good, sound common
sense. The questions put were clear and to the point. More
than once we were driven into a corner and hard put to it to
find a satisfactory answer. I don’t know what our audience
thought of us, but sitting there listening to my colleagues being
put through the mill, or standing up and going through it
myself, I had a very definite feeling that we were not somehow
quite all we had thought we were when we arrived. Our
scientific knowledge seemed not quite so logical. The gaps in it
became more evident, uncomfortably evident sometimes, and
it struck me that we had all been rather too willing to take over
the prejudices of our predecessors without sufficient examina-
tion. The frank criticism of this unprejudiced, free-thinking,
ingenious and quick-witted audience got us thinking again more
than once. In my life I have often had to stand up to question
and answer before intelligent audiences, but I don’t think I
40

Science^ Politics and Personalities

have ever been more cleverly, mercilessly and yet fairly cate-
chized than I was when I stood on that memorable evening
before the members of the Mixed Pickle Club.

But to return to Italy: the strength of Italian medical training
lies chiefly, I think, in its artistic imagination, and therefore
the Italians are best therapeutically and as diagnosticians.
There is no doubt that Morgagni is the father of experimental
pathology. After Aristotle it was he who first formulated the
great problems of natural science. It is by no means ex-
aggerated to trace back modern medicine to Morgagni, and
problems of generation and development as they present
themselves to us to-day to Spallanzani. Morgagni was the first
to bring life into the study of morphology by revealing its
functions. Unfortunately there are many even to-day who are
not as far advanced as Morgagni was, and who still stress
morphology excessively. What a waste of time and labour
to stuff the student with dead material and ignore its living
functions !

Unfortunately the civilizing urge towards cleanliness, order
and punctuality degenerated into Fascist pedantry and resulted
in a lessening of real culture. I think the exchange was hardly
worth the candle, and I can only hope that the Italians will one
day return to their once indisputable place in the vanguard of
human culture. In any case, I have never let myself lose touch
with Italian medical thought. To-day I recall with equal
pleasure the spiritistic seances I attended with Luciani and other
men of science in the Hotel Quirinal, and the very arduous
laboratory work on altitude physiology with Professor Mosso
in the Laboratorio Regina Margherita on Monte Rosa. The
laboratory stood at about 10,000 feet above sea level, and it was
part of my job as the youngest member of the scientific party
to see to the culinary side of our wants. Even then I rather
fancied myself a^ a cook, but the first meal I produced wounded
my vanity to the quick. The vegetables in particular were hard
and inedible. The would-be scientist had forgotten that at that
height water boils at about 60° Celsius, and it is therefore quite
impossible to get vegetables done. My grinning colleagues may
have enjoyed their Schadenfreude^ but they didn’t enjoy their
dinner.

41

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

Even at Germany’s universities the atmosphere was very
different to what it subsequently became. By the end of the
nineteenth century, when I was still a student, the centre of
medicine had definitely shifted from Vienna to Berlin. There
were still one or two pioneers of the famous old medical school
left at work in Vienna, but their star was waning. Zucker-
kandl the anatomist will not easily be forgotten in the annals
of medicine, or Exner the physiologist. And then there was the
great Billroth himself, the first surgeon to operate for cancer
of the stomach.

In the heyday of the Vienna school the newspapers would
issue special editions with professorial bulletins on particu-
larly striking operations, so keen was the interest of the general
public for everything connected with medical science. It was
something like the situation in Paris when the newspapers issued
special editions at times of political crisis. The same thing
happened when the first tuberculin innoculations were made
in cases of lupus. The founder of the modern ear, nose and
throat school, the Hungarian-born Adam Pollitzer, was still
at work in Vienna, together with my special teacher in nasal
pathology, Hayek, who died in exile in this country only a little
while back. And there was Neusser, my first clinical teacher,
whom I remember with particular gratitude. Amongst the
Faculty he had a great reputation as a diagnostician, and as
Consiliarius for the Imperial House his prestige was very
great. He was a quiet and benevolent spirit whose brain en-
compassed a complicated world of scientific knowledge and
ideas. I remember the sureness and competence of his diag-
nosis to this day. The only other man amongst my many
teachers I can compare with him was Widal in Paris.

I was only nineteen at the time, but I had worked out a
method of percussion which I regarded as an improvement,
and hesitantly and rather diffidently I showed it to Neusser.
He recognized its value and usefulness at once and invited me
to his house. From that day until his death he was my very
good friend. But really I think that when he got to know me it
was my love of music he appreciated even more than my
very real devotion to medicine. Neusser himself was a passionate
lover of music, and in addition a chain smoker and a great
42

Science^ Politics and Personalities

drinker of red wine. He was married to the opera singer Mark,
and I was often allowed to accompany her on the piano. Their
marriage was a very happy one. Later on it gave me great plea-
sure to have their only son with me in Berlin during the period
of his Aramaic studies and recall in the presence of such an ap-
preciative listener the happy hours I had spent in their house.

I was very glad when an opportunity arose to show my
gratitude to Neusser on the scientific field. At the beginning of
this century haematology came into being as a new field of in-
vestigation. I sought and found an opportunity of studying the
methods of dyeing blood cells with Hayem in Paris, and still
more with Ehrlich and Lazarus in the Charlottenburg Hospital
in Berlin. It was these methods which first made diagnosis
possible in blood diseases. Full of my new knowledge and
borrowed wisdom I rushed back to Neusser. Although by that
time he was an old man he plunged into the new science with
tremendous enthusiasm and before long he had thoroughly
mastered it. Typical of the man was the fact that on one
occasion he took a patient suffering from Malta fever into his
own house to be able to keep a closer eye on what was then a
little-known disease.

However, there was no doubt about it, Vienna was declining
as a medical centre. The new scientific wind was blowing from
Berlin, though when I got there I found that things were by no
means so satisfactory as I had thought and hoped, Virchow
dominated the world of medical science, and he ruled like a
tyrant and dictator. His relation to those around him was
neither fatherly nor friendly. Everyone feared him, many
respected him for his very real qualities, but few liked him. It is
a hard word, but if Virchow had died in 1864 after having
published his pioneer work on cellular pathology, with its
guiding motto Omnis cellula ex cellula, the whole of medical
science would have developed quicker than it did in the strait
jacket he kept on it during the rest of his life. At least we should
have been able to welcome earlier the return of the highly
valuable humoral pathology in its new guise as serology, Vir-
chow outlived his usefulness by thirty years. Whoever dared to
speak of humoral pathological secretions during Virchow’s time
was ruthlessly bullied and bludgeoned into silence.

43

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

I made his acquaintance about five years before he finally
died. On principle he never slept more than four hours nightly,
and his appearance confirmed it. He was a frail-looking little
man with a full grey beard clipped rather short, and he wore
an out-size pair of glasses. At his lectures the only way to tell
whether he was talking or not was to look at his jaw to see if it
was waggling. It was purgatory for anyone trying to hear what
he was muttering in his beard. But to watch him make a post-
mortem dissection was a real delight. His macroscopic and
microscopic diagnoses were beyond cavil. But he made one
mistake which caused him much mortification. He correctly
judged that the piece of vocal cord removed for test purposes
from the throat of the German Heir Apparent (who later became
Kaiser Friedrich of Germany) by the famous Scottish laryn-
gologist Morrel MacKenzie and submitted to him for examina-
tion was healthy tissue. But then in consequence he dismissed
the diagnosis of von Gerhardt, who declared the trouble to be
cancer of the throat, and supported the diagnosis of Morrel
MacKenzie, who denied it. Where Virchow went wrong was
in failing to inquire whether the tissue he had examined had
been taken from the diseased part of the patient’s throat.

Beyond all dispute Kaiser Friedrich actually died from cancer
of the throat. Virchow was not even permitted to go near the
royal corpse, and the post-mortem dissection was carried out by
Waldeyer, a professor of normal anatomy who had probably
never done a pathological-anatomic dissection in his life before.

Under Virchow’s unbending influence pathological anatomy
was given a dominating position. The anatomist developed,
so to speak, into the final arbiter of practical medicine; he
expressed no opinion, but pronounced a verdict. Unfortunately
some medical schools even to-day are under the influence of
this baneful idea. If instead of asking the fruitless and un-
interesting question : what did a man die of, we asked ourselves
the much more important question: how could the man still
live with his sickness a minute before death, the answer would
comply with the final postulate of medical investigation — of life
instead of death.

I hope that I shall not be misunderstood and quoted as
treating pathological anatomy with insufficient respect. I
44

Science^ Politics and Personalities

am perfectly well aware of all the developments medicine owes
to that valued branch of science; it is merely that I am
anxious to deny it the excessive importance which has been, and
still is sometimes ascribed to it. This attitude was partly
responsible for the excessive specialization which led to topic-
anatomical organic diagnosis, which in its turn produced the
false outlook which caused doctors to treat organs and sick-
nesses rather than organisms and sick people. It was in opposi-
tion to this mentality and its organic diagnosis that after my
admission into the Faculty in Berlin more than thirty years ago
I introduced (as the first and for many years the only one) a
course of lectures on functional diagnosis. As a result I won, if
not many friends, at least some very loyal ones.

Amongst my teachers in Berlin at the beginning of the century
there were a number of prominent and distinguished men.
There was the anatomist Waldeyer, already mentioned in
passing ; still youthful when his hair was as white as snow, and a
friend of youth — particularly the female youth. With his white
hair and beard he might have stepped from a Tintoretto
painting. He was the only anatomist I ever knew who seemed
able to bring life even into this soulless science. Then there was
the surgeon Ernst von Bergmann, “His Excellency’’, for he held
the highest military medical rank. After Virchow’s death he
became President of the Medical Association. Tall and broad,
with a Roman nose and his hair heavily pomaded and combed
straight back from his forehead, his appearance was more im-
posing than winning. His manner seemed calm and extremely
objective, though in reality he was neither the one nor the other.
He was one of the founders of modern aseptic surgery. His
operative technique and discipline were admirable, and he was
one of the very few in his day who dared to operate on the brain.
Although in private life, which he enjoyed to the full, he was far
from a misogynist, he was an anti-feminist on principle and he
refused to accept women students on the ground that his scroU
of appointment contained the old « formula used by King
Friedrich Wilhelm when founding the University of Berlin,
exhorting the professors to educate “the male youth of the
country”.

There was another Excellency, Ernst von Leyden, a clinical

45

Janos i The Story of a Doctor

genius and the first man to draw up the classic formula for
locomotor ataxy. He was a personal friend of the Kaiserin and
a man of enormous influence over his patients. He really made
the lame to walk and the blind to see — ^particularly in cases of
hysteria. But this suave Grand Seigneur did not make the same
deep impression on me as his clinical colleague Gerhardt with
his fiery red face and habitus apoplecticus. Gerhardt was a
real propaedeutic pedant, a fine diagnostician and a therapeutic
nihilist. He was a good and encouraging teacher without a
great deal of phantasy, but tremendously painstaking and exact
in his examination of patients. It was certainly through
Gerhardt that I was inspired to my minor propaedeutic
inventions, the solid stethoscope, the method of percussion for
the apex of the lung, and the analysis of various percussion
phenomena. The only way in which he acknowledged my
somewhat different relation to him was by treating me with
even more gruffness than the other students.

And finally there was Salkowsky, the father of bio-chemistry,
another of my teachers. It was at this time that he had just
discovered the autolytic ferment, a process which led to the
auto-dissolution of organs in sterile preservation. This ferment
is thus produced by so-called dead organs, and it opened up a
great deal of discussion as to whether a dead man could really
be regarded as dead when, even after the death certificate had
been duly filled out, his organs could still produce living and
active phenomena. For forensic medicine, theology and phil-
osophy the cat was right amongst the pigeons. Salkowsky him-
self was hugely pleased at the stir he had created, for it provided
him with the necessary publicity for his new-founded science.

Berlin never has had an authentic student atmosphere, and
no orthodox student life ever developed there. The town was
too international, and offered too many counter-attractions of a
sophisticatedly urban nature. But the students at the university
were industrious and made good use of the opportunities of
learning offered them. And in one point at least Berlin had
the advantage over Vienna, though it sounds strange to-day:
there was hardly a trace of racial or national hatreds, and this
remained refreshingly true — until the arrival of Hitler. There
were certainly political antagonisms. There was the V.D.S.
46

Science^ Politics and Personalities

(Verein Deutscher Studenten) the Association of German
Students, which refused to admit Jews as members, and its
libertarian counterpart, the F.W.V. (Freie Wissenschaftliche
Vereinigung), the Free Scientific Association. It was only later,
under Hitler’s baleful influence, that it came to fisticuffs between
liberal students and nationalistic rowdies. In those early
days Germania docet was an honoured principle, and the pro-
fessonial collegium was dotted with distinguished foreign
guests. The proud principle obliged its upholders to generous
hospitality. In fact at the University of Berlin a remarkable
liberalism prevailed in the appointment of notabilities, a spirit
seen only rarely in other countries.

In this matter I feel strongly that in any future world planning
special importance should be attached to a regular exchange of
teachers and professors, whereby foreign teachers or professors
should not necessarily be appointed because they are better or
more famous than those available at home, but merely because
they will be different and likely to bring new angles and
opinions with them. That is to say, the guiding principle should
be that of the greatest possible diversity and not competitive.
Any nationally coloured educational system suffers from that
narrow-minded and foolish vanity which strives always to claim
every possible scientific achievement for its own nationals.
This spirit is most inimical to really scientific endeavour, and
its upholders are usually not above a little trickery to gain
their ends. And let it not be thought that this unpleasant
stupidity is something specifically German; unfortunately it
can be met with everywhere. The conscious, or even uncon-
scious, desire to inflate the importance of the scientific accom-
plishment of one’s own compatriots is a problem not to be under-
estimated. To my good fortune it so happens that my education
has been thoroughly international, and in consequence I have
been rendered immune from this particular kind of nationalistic
poison.

At the end of my student forays abroad I always returned
heavily laden to Budapest. I would gladly have spent whole
terms at foreign universities, adding to my knowledge and
experience, but here too a narrow nationalism raised the bar.
Even the smallest and meanest universities like to pretend that

47

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

they alone are competent to teach their charges, and it is always
a matter of great difficulty for a student to persuade his own
alma mater to give him credit for any part of his studies he may
have done elsewhere, though if common sense instead of
nationalistic obscurantism or local patriotism were allowed free
play any university would be only too glad to see the knowledge,
of its undergraduates broadened and extended by intercourse
with foreign ideas.

I had no time to lose, so as soon as I had ended my course
I put forward my name for the examen rigorosum. Exactly ten
terms after my immatriculation I was awarded the doctoral
degree. But even before the final examination I accepted a post
as assistant at Dr. Brehmer’s famous sanatorium for tubercu-
losis in Goerbersdorf. It was at this time that modern curative*
methods for tuberculosis were spreading rapidly throughout
Europe, and sanatoria on the model of Dr. Brehmer’s were
springing up everywhere. The fear of bacilli and a positive
rage for hygiene were sweeping over the world. With all its
exaggerations the rage certainly did no harm, for sanitary
conditions in the hospitals of those days were shocking. For
instance, the Vienna General Hospital would have been con-
demned by any Government inspector for the keeping of pigs,
but it housed hundreds of sick human beings. In the Berlin
Charite a far from hygienic W.C. was situated in the middle
of the wards. In the Salpetriere and the Hotel Dieu in Paris
patients lay on straw sacks in the overfilled wards, and to see
fat canal rats scurrying over them was not an unusual sight. I
can remember seeing these scurrying beasts when I was watching
Dieulafoi using his famous apparatus to tap a pleurisy exudate.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the hospital world was
rotten ripe for sanitary improvements, and one of the pioneer
institutions of the new ideas was the sanatorium of Dr. Brehmer,
the first of its kind.

Brehmer was a botanist and he was also a consumptive. On
the advice of the clinical lecturer at Berlin University, Schoen-
lein, he went to the foothills of the Himalayas and continued his
investigations in the warmer and more favourable climate there.
When he returned to Berlin he was cured. His own case inter-
ested him in tuberculosis and its treatment and he studied

48

Science^ Politics and Personalities

medicine, taking his degree in 1864 a dissertation thesis
entitled “Tuberculosis is Curable”. The main witness to the
correctness of his thesis was Schoenlein, who supported him in
every way. Brehmer then returned to his Silesian home and
opened up his sanatorium in the middle of pine woods at
Goerbersdorf. His patients lay out in the open, and they were
carefully dieted and systematically exercised, whilst at the same
time everything was done to improve their general health.
From these primitive beginnings a system of treatment for
tuberculosis patients developed which, with minor variations,
is in operation and generally recognized down to this day.
Brehmer was highly successful with his treatment, and soon
tubercular patients were coming to him not only from all parts
of Germany, but from all parts of the world. That was,
incidentally, in the pre-bacteriological period. Before long
Goerbersdorf was overcrowded and one pavilion after the other
had to be built. Throughout Brehmer’s life Goerbersdorf
enjoyed a monopoly, and continued to do so for a while even
after his death, until the sanatoria movement, if we can call it
that, spread rapidly all over the world, first of all in Germany,
then in Switzerland, and finally farther afield.

By this time, however, bacteriological knowledge was wide-
spread and the new sanatoria were built according to its prin-
ciples. It seems incredible to-day, but it is nevertheless true
that it is only within the last forty-odd years that the world in
general and the medical profession in particular has realized
the importance of sunlight, fresh air and water as prophylactic
and curative factors. It took thirty years for instance before
Pasteur’s discoveries became common knowledge and were put
to practical use. From thirty to forty years seems the period of
maturity required before a new idea can become firmly estab-
lished and join the classic fund of human knowledge. That
is about the general rate of collective thought. To take an
example from the field of art, it is only after the passage of forty
years that paintings are removed from the Palais du Luxem-
bourg to the Louvre — ^if after examination they are considered
worthy of that honour. There is something symbolic and gener-
ally valid in that. In practical affairs the situation is just the
same : whether it is a question of the steam-engine, the aero-

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

plane or the zip-fastener, inventions have taken a period of at
least thirty years before their recognition and practical applica-
tion became general. Dr. Brehmer’s thesis and the whole
science of bacteriology made no quicker progress.

But when I arrived as a very young assistant in Goerbersdorf
the place was in many respects already out of date. I remember
turning green with envy when I saw Dr. Turban’s plans for the
first sanatorium for tubercular patients in Davos, but it did not
spoil my delight and satisfaction at securing an appointment at
such a medical sanctuary, for it had already become that, as
Goerbersdorf. Brehmer himself had been dead some years
when I arrived to take my place as the newest and youngest of a
dozen assistants. I was met at the station by the then pro-
prietor, Wegener, with a carriage. When I got in with my one
suitcase he asked me helpfully whether he should send a cart
down to collect the heavier luggage. I really believe this was the
first time in my life that it occurred to me that the creature com-
forts might demand more for their satisfaction than could be
packed away in one small suitcase. Everything I possessed was
either on my back or in that case. This was the beginning of
what might be called my economic life. All I have possessed
from that day to this I have earned. The lack of material
possessions never depressed me, just as in later life a super-
fluity never elated me. I can honestly say that my life has been
spent chasing after more important things than worldly goods,
though in my later life I never lacked. a sufficiency of them.

My salary at Goerbersdorf was 130 marks monthly with
board and lodging. It wasn’t much even in those days, but the
position gave me an opportunity of extending my scientific
education at one of the leading centres of curative medicine.
Those were the days in which the tubercular bacillus discovered
by Robert Koch was making its way in the world and tuber-
culin treatment was becoming fashionable. Koch’s tuberculin
was bought up by the Hoechster Farbwerke for a million
marks, a very large sum in those days. Its possession enabled
Koch to divorce his first wife and enter into a new matrimonial
venture with a plump, blonde and most attractive young lady
from the stage. I have often wondered whether the undoubted
counter-attractions of life with this young woman (much
50

Science^ Politics and Personalities

younger than himself) had anything to do with the fact that
Koch released his valuable discovery for general use before
carefully seeing it through the requisite long period of tests.
In any case, that is what he irresponsibly did, with the result
that his specific very quickly got into the hands of incompetents
who used it without discrimination, causing a great deal of
avoidable damage.

It was perhaps this unfortunate example which caused
Ehrlich to be extra careful, and it was only after years and
years of careful experiment and innumerable tests that he
finally permitted salvarsan to come on to the market. Perhaps
I am wrong in my supposition, but Ehrlich was a happily
married man, and whereas Koch’s second wife undoubtedly
sweetened his life in one respect, in another she was something
of a burden, and it is not too much to suppose that the amount
of energy he had left for his scientific work was limited. At
first Koch had made all his experiments and achieved his great-
est discoveries with the sole help of his daughter, who had been
his assistant even as an adolescent. Her sexless reliability (as
far as her father was concerned at least) was the sober counter-
part to the erotic romance represented by his second wife.

In accordance with the new spirit at large in the medical
world a laboratory expert was appointed chief of the Goer-
bersdorf Sanatorium instead of a clinical specialist. This was
the Geheimer Regierungsrat Julius Petri of the Imperial Board
of Health. He had been an army medical man and as such he
had been seconded to Koch as his assistant. When I first met
him Petri was getting on for sixty. He was an authentic Prus-
sian disciplinarian, the strict and rather vain headmaster type
of man I have always abominated. His chief anxiety was to
maintain discipline not only amongst his staff, but amongst
the patients too. On any and every half-way suitable occasion
he would appear in the full-dress uniform of a Chief Army
Doctor, and the sash round his protuberant belly always
reminded me of the equator round a globe. The man wasn’t a
doctor at all, and over and above that he was falling into pre-
mature senility, but in his lucid moments one could learn a
thing or two from him where bacteriology and laboratory
technique were concerned. He had made quite a name for him-

51

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

self in the scientific world by a minor but brilliant process with
which he solved the problem of isolating microscopic individual
phenomena from the general convolut of bacteria, thus making
it possible to produce them in pure culture and study their
conditions of life. He did this by letting a drop of the bacterio-
logical mixture fall into a test tube full of agar medium, and
after thoroughly mixing the result he poured it into a sterilized
glass dish and covered it carefully with another glass dish and
then let it solidify at the appropriate temperature. Spread out
in this fashion each bacillus formed its own colony, and could
be removed with a platinum instrument into test tubes for
reproduction in pure culture. This “Petri-dish"’ was the
material key to the subsequent tremendous development of
bacteriology j, and the monument to Koch in Berlin depicts him
standing with — a Petri-dish in his hand.

My tasks at the sanatorium included everything the older
assistants found tiresome or beneath their dignity. At six o’clock
in the morning, summer and winter, it was my task to supervise
the hydropathic procedure which was carried out in a separate
annex in the middle of the woods, and after that I was in
the laboratory to carry out microscopic, bacteriological and
chemical tests of sputum taken from the patients. In whatever
meantime was available the particular patients entrusted to my
care had to be visited and looked after. When it was dark the
corpses, if any, had to be dissected, and sometimes embalmed.
I had had no training in many of these tasks, and I had to use
every spare minute to learn whatever was necessary in order not
to expose my ignorance. All of the older assistants proved
valuable to me in one way or the other, but it was to Petri alo]^e
that I owed my bacteriological training. One of the things I
have to thank him for most of all was the fact that he made me
carry out all the more menial tasks attached to a laboratory. I
had to wash and sterilize the glassware, boil and prepare the
culture mediums, and feed, keep clean and generally look after
the animals we kept for experimental purposes, with the happy
result that in later life I was never wholly dependent on my
laboratory attendants. I could always do everything myself if
need be. And, what was still more important, I could exercise
a knowledgable control over even the most menial processes.
52

Science, Politics and Personalities

No lazy or good-for-nothing laboratory attendant ever had a
chance of pulling the wool over my eyes.

And on top of all these multifarious tasks I still had to prepare
myself for my final examination, and at Petri’s instance I wrote
a monograph on the sanatorium treatment of pulmonary
tuberculosis. It was more a compilation from Brehmer’s
writings and a systematic adaptation of his case-book experi-
ences than an independent work. It was to be published by
Vogel & Kleinbrink, and I already had the galleys in hand for
correction when I decided to scrap the whole thing. After all,
there was nothing original in it and it was not even based on
my own experience.

The Goerbersdorf period was interrupted by my examination
and by the second half of my military service. When I finally
returned I found my activity there much less satisfactory, par-
ticularly after Petri’s death, and I decided to found a sanatorium
of "my own in Hungary. A good opportunity seemed to offer
itself in a little spa, Rajecz-Teplitz, situated in the wonderful
central massif of the Upper Tatras. The place is now in
Slovakia. Koloman Szell, the Hungarian Prime Minister of the
day, was favourably inclined to my idea and promised me every
support. The necessary draft had already been drawn up for
presentation to Parliament, and I was already counting my
chickens, when a change of Cabinet occurred and blighted my
hopes. In all its Habsburg pig-headedness Vienna had stuck
in its toes over the question of introducing Hungarian as a
language of command in the army, with the result that the
opposition began a campaign of obstruction which led to the
resignation of the Cabinet. My beautiful plan wasn’t worth
the paper the draft was so carefully w^ritten on.

It was a heavy blow for me, and I literally stood, as the
French say, vis-a-vis de rien. Instead of founding my sanatorium
in Rajecz-Teplitz I was compelled to accept the post of spa
doctor there, which happened to be vacant at the time. My
ambitious dream of a great medical career seemed at an end,
for to become staff doctor in a small, primitive little place like
Rajecz-Teplitz was much like becoming ship’s doctor on a third-
class passenger boat, and it was not at all to my liking. The
principle of Julius Caesar that to be first in Rajecz (or wherever

53

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

it was he had in mind as an alternative) was better than being
second in Rome, never appealed to me.

But I was lucky. My very first season brought me a most
striking and unexpected success. The venerated pastor of a
near-by community had suffered a stroke. Like so many village
pastors he had become excessively corpulent as the result of
years of good living. It was no easy matter to get at the main
vein through the layers of fat which covered his reverence’s arm.
Several older colleagues from neighbouring villages had tried
without success when I, the young newcomer, was permitted
to make the attempt. More by luck than judgment I succeeded
at once. I opened the vein and the blood flowed in a relieved
torrent. And all this trial and error, and final success, took place
not in some quiet and out-of-the-way surgery from which the
general public was excluded, but in the ground-floor front
room of the pastor’s house, with half the village craning their
necks to see the operation through the open window and
keeping the other and less fortunately situated half informed by
loud vocal comments concerning the fate of their beloved pastor.

They were still patriarchal days. When the blood-letting had
been successful I heard my Slovakian brothers sigh in a chorus
of relief, which was followed by enthusiastic shouts of ^^Toje
dobre doctor^\ That’s a good doctor. My reputation was made.
For nine successive summers I went to Rajecz every year and
practised there in July and August, and I have never had cause
to regret the time I spent there. As a result of my successful
work the place grew and became better known, and in the
end it was able to place itself on a financially sound footing.
Peasant carts with patients were lined up along the road,
though the next town was not very far away.

I was quite on my own in Rajecz and there was no colleague
I could turn to. Book knowledge and speculation alone were
not enough ; I had to act on the spot, and what I hadn’t to hand
I had to improvise with imagination and love of my profession.
Only missionaries and doctors in the jungle can know to what
straits a man can come in circumstances like that, but I felt
myself more a doctor than I have ever felt in my . life, and right
at the top of my form. Later on, as Consiliarius, one is, aufond,
little more than an agent of specialists. And another thing, as
54

Science^ Politics and Personalities

doctor in urban surroundings one never comes across such
monstrously neglected cases as I sometimes had to deal with in
that out-of-the-way corner of the world. A man is put on his
mettle.

The medical treatises I began to publish made me more or
less known in the medical world, and Rajecz became better
known too. The little spa began to attract many interesting
guests, some of whom became my life-long friends. Often when
I returned at the beginning of the season from nine months spent
abroad in research and study, my colleagues in the district
would come in to listen to my lectures on the progress of medical
science. One of my most zealous listeners was a certain Dr.
Dusan Makowiczky. He was an idealistic Slav, a man of
unusual culture with a fine medical training. There was some-
thing ethereal about him which made people respect and honour
him. He had quite a good practice, but he lived very frugally
and always wore a simple Russian blouse. He was filled with a
fanatical love for the Slavs, but he did not hate the Hungarians
as most other pro-Slavs did. He was the centre of the Pan-Slav
movement in the neighbourhood and I have some reason to
believe that he was connected with the Secret Service of
Czarist Russia, the Ochrana.

Another interesting personality I sometimes met in Rajecz
was Thomas Masaryk, who always came to us on his annual
propaganda tour. His honesty and benevolence and his high
intelligence made a deep impression on me. Masaryk loved the
Czech people and I believe he was prepared to make any
sacrifice in the cause of Pan-Slavism. His political ambitions
were more modest in those days than they subsequently became.
He wanted to restore the old Kingdom of Bohemia, but only in
concert with other Slav nations, and particularly Russia. The
idea of a Czechoslovakian State had not then been conceived —
that was an ad hoc product born of the European political con-
stellation after the dissolution of the old Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. In any case, in the beginning Masaryk’s ideas and
propaganda were purely Pan-Slav, and it was from this
general conception that he hoped, rather vaguely, to secure
liberty for his people from the Austrian yoke. My colleague
Dr. Dusan Makowiczky was his Slovakian exponent.

55

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

I could understand and, to a certain extent, sympathize
with Makowiczky’s aspirations, because Hungary certainly
treated its national minorities badly and very stupidly, but I
could summon up no sort of enthusiasm for his general political
ideas. One day when I visited him in Zilina, a town not far
away, I found him as though transformed. The reason was, as
he told me, that he had at last succeeded in saving 10,000
Crowns and he was now in a position to get Tolstoy’s ‘‘Anna
Karenina” published in Slovakian. He had himself done the
translation in his spare time. It duly appeared, and I believe
it was the first literary work of any importance to be published
in Slovakian. Not long after this triumph Makowiczky came
to me to say good-bye. He had determined to give up his
practice and spend the rest of his life with Tolstoy.

I heard of him only once after that ; it was when Tolstoy made
his last flight from the world (and in particular from his own
family). My friend and colleague Dusan was allowed to go
with him. It is very likely that Dusan was the only person
present to stand by the lonely apostle of the rights of man in his
last difficult hours. Dusan Makowiczky was a fine character
with a noble heart and a fine presence. With his gentle blue
eyes and his reddish blond beard and hair he remains in my
memory as a sort of latter-day Christ.

Another memorable friend I first met in Rajecz and one who
meant a lot to me was the actress Marie Jaszai. For Hungarians
I need only mention her name. For half a century she was the
uncrowned queen of Hungary, but her fame remained ex-
clusively Hungarian, though it would have been easy enough
for her to have brought the world to her feet. Uncrowned,
did I say? At the age of nineteen the golden laurel wreath of
the nation was placed on her head in recognition of her great
services to art. And as long as she lived her right to wear it as
Hungary’s supreme artist was never in dispute. Indeed, for
Hungary Jaszai is more than a name; she is a conception, a
symbol of dramatic and aesthetic art embracing the whole scale
of the female emotions : fascination, charm, grace, and, above
all, the vocal art. Not a note in the whole gamut Jaszai did not
command : from a delightful whisper over vibrant tones to the
full-throated clang of the storm,

56

Science^ Politics and Persoftalities

I shall never forget her performance in Grillparzer’s ^‘Medea”.
The passion of Jason is cooling, and she determines to win him
back. Jason, ich weiss ein Lied, And Jason, made weak by
the first gentle coo, moved by the cry of despair, and finally
more than a little alarmed at the threatening repetition in a
higher key, is obviously unmanned. I am certain that if he
could have had his way he would have flung away his weapons
and taken her in his arms there and then — but Grillparzer
would have nothing of the sort. In the meantime the audience
was growing restless. Entirely out of sympathy with the unfor-
tunate Jason they demonstratively took Jaszai’s part and
roared with mixed anger and enthusiasm.

Yes, people took their theatre-going more seriously in those
days. The casinos arranged flower fetes for prima donnas like
Marie Jaszai, Ilka Palmay, Louise Blaha, Boriska Frank and
Juliska Kopacsy. We students would gather around the stage
door in wet or fine, snow or hail, waiting for our idol to enter
her carriage, and then we would unharness the horses and drag
home the carriage under a rain of flowers. The Jaszai, or as
we preferred to call her ‘‘uncle Marie” on account of her
sonorous voice, was more often honoured in this way than any
other actress.

Yes, of course, such marks of esteem pleased her, but she
attached very little importance to them. “Publicity” meant
nothing to her. She was a great reader, and I believe she was
truly happiest amongst her books. She spoke English, French
and German fluently as well as her mother tongue. She had a
tremendous thirst for knowledge, and she wrote widely read
books and essays, v^hich secured her election to the Academy.
Every mortal thing interested her, but two : awards and mathe-
matics. It was literally impossible for me — and I did my best —
to make it perfectly clear to her why she ought to get 94
kreutzer back out of a florin if the fare cost 6 kreutzer. That
may sound extreme, but I have always believed that nature
gives each of us a certain maximum capacity. Whoever has an
excess of one talent suffers lack in another. Those who are
blessed with equal capacity in everything are the mediocrities,
the average men and women. The one-sidedly blessed are the
geniuses. And I have never met a genius who did not suflfer

57

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

from some defect or the other. A good pedigree bull is highly
valuable in one particular fashion : it will produce good pedi-
gree progeny. A genius has never produced a genius. Uni-
versality is mediocrity. Singularity is genius.

Marie Jaszai was more an assimilative genius than a creative
one. She took in everything and adapted it to her own in-
dividuality. Her main strength as an actress was her declama-
tion, I loved declamation ; it was my special weakness — in both
senses of the word — I loved it but I had no talent for it at all.
Nevertheless it was to a declamation that I owed my first
material success in the world of art. At the Liberty Day cele-
brations I won the school prize of a ducat with my declamation
of a poem by Petoefi all about broken chains, citizens of the
world republic, and suchlike seditious and awkward matters.
Our fat and worthy School Director, Avendano Gabriel Corzan,
grew more and more purple and seemed on the verge of an
apoplectic stroke, but I proceeded undismayed and unfurled
the red banner of revolution in a crescendo of vociferous sound
that made my stomach muscles ache — but I won the prize. It
was the first money I ever earned in my life. Marie Jaszai took
me in hand and taught me to speak. It was of great value to me
in later life when, at times, I had to lecture for hours on end.

The years I spent in Rajecz seem as far away as a dream. I
worked during the day without interruption, and I could keep
it up only because the evening brought rest and relaxation with
non-medical people. In time the little spa developed into a
sort of literary and artistic centre much favoured by actors,
artists, musicians, painters, scientists and writers in need of a
few weeks’ rest and spa treatment. An intimate and familiar
atmosphere developed. We arranged concerts and dramatic
evenings for charitable purposes, and for the building of a
chapel to our own plans. The first funds we obtained we used
for putting our stock of musical instruments in order and buying
a harmonium. It took us two years to collect what we needed
for the building of the chapel, and I only hope that it still looks
down peacefully on our disordered world. Every form of
church music from the cantata to the oratorio was performed
there. My chief musical mentor was Adolf Back, leader of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra and later professor at the Vienna
53

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Conservatorium. My favourite piece was a rather melodramatic
arrangement of Schubert’s *'Ave Maria”, which was usually
performed with moonlight streaming through the chapel
windows. Carl Agghazy played the harmonium, and Adolf
Back the solo violin, whilst the famous opera singer Blanche von
Farkas sang the soprano part and Marie Jaszai spoke the prayer.

Such performances made a much deeper impression on me
than any routine professional performance carried out to the
accompaniment of printed tickets and numbered seats. The
charm of such moments cannot be ordered and arranged. It is
no mass phenomenon, but an individual human experience.
Those who take part in it do so with heart and soul, unmoved
by any business or professional considerations and with no
thought to the satisfaction of a paying audience. The singer
sings as a bird sings, and not as the music agent hopes. Every
public artistic performance has something of prostitution about
it, and in this case therefore I can risk without cynicism the
comparison with a street walker who sells her attractions, but
reserves her heart for some unprofessional love. At such
evenings in our little chapel art was truly for art’s sake, un-
burdened by any material thought, and almost without the
urge to shine which Adler stresses so much as one of the main-
springs of human action. Such experiences were more than
mere concerts, and the memory of them still moves me to-day.

The happiest days of my maturer youth were spent in
Rajecz, where the magnificent world of nature spread itself out
in all its mountainous glory. For the first time in my life I con-
sciously enjoyed the fields and the meadows, the deep silence of
the pine forests, and, in the distance, the mountain peaks rising
into the blue sky. The harvest filled me with a feeling of thank-
fulness to the Almighty, and the peasant in his fields gave me
a deep respect for human labour. Without cant I can say that
it was here that I received the tonsure as a servant of humanity.
Everything I experienced in Rajecz was clean and decent. And
I fell in love with the world once and for all. And not all the
warts on its face have ever made any difference since.

Unforgettable memories crowd in. I can still hear the voice
of Jaszai on warm summer’s evenings as I lay stretched out
on the grass in physical well-being after many hours spent

59

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

crouched over the microscope and she recited sonnets of Shake-
speare she had translated. And whilst her marvellous voice
formed the eternal words she would perhaps be carefully darn-
ing a hole in my sock without taking it off and without pricking
me with the needle. Her translations of these sonnets, the first
in Hungarian, were later published by the Hungarian Academy.

And there is one other experience deeply impressed on my
memory which I owe to Jaszai: my meeting with General
Arthur Goergei. One Sunday she took me with her to see him
at Visegrad, a little town beautifully situated at a bend in the
river, and we started off early in the morning on one of the
Danube steamers. The General himself met us at the quay.
He was almost ninety by that time, but a very tall, slim and
upright figure with a head of silver hair and a neat white beard
clipped short. He greeted us with great charm and friendliness. A
coachman in Hungarian livery sat on the box of his carriage, and
we drove back to the simple white house in which he lived and in
which he so seldom received visitors. Since the crushing of the
Hungarian revolt in 1848 the old gentleman had lived in strictest
retirement. At the age of thirty-three he was the commander of
the Hungarian revolutionary forces, as Ludwig Kossuth, idolized
to this day by all Hungarians, was their political leader.

In their tempestuous urge for national liberty the Hungarians
were the first of the many races living in the monarchy to rise
against Habsburg absolutism. Under Goergei’s capable leader-
ship the armed rebels gave the Habsburg armies, still well
trained and disciplined from the days of the Napoleonic Wars,
a very great deal to do. The rebels captured the fortress of Buda
and the Danubian town of Komarom, and even threatened
Vienna. The Austrian Army alone proved unable to crush
the Hungarian rising, and Austria therefore called on Russia for
aid. With this the odds against a Hungarian victory became
overwhelming, and to save a useless waste of Hungarian blood
and preserve the flower of Hungary’s youth, Goergei laid down
his arms near Isaszeg, The impetuous Kossuth branded the
act as treachery and the man as a traitor. Kaiser Franz
Joseph spared the lives of Goergei and a number of other rebel
leaders, but on October 6th 1849 thirteen Hungarian leaders
were hanged in Arad. The Hungarians have never forgotten

60

Science^ Politics and Personalities

that act of vengefulness, and though Goergei continued to be
feared and disliked by the Habsburgers and their supporters
as a Hungarian rebel, he was hated by his fellow Hungarian
patriots as a traitor.

I honoured Goergei both as a national hero and as a humani-
tarian figure of historical format. We stayed several days in
Visegrad, and during that time we became such good friends
that it was possible for me to touch on matters which it would
otherwise have been impossible to raise without impertinence.
Goergei’s household was that of a simple Hungarian noble, and
in his self-imposed isolation he had thought much on Hungary’s
past and on her future. He strictly opposed Habsburg absolut-
ism and the Germanization of Hungary, and was as much as
ever in favour of Hungary’s ^independence. He was a man of
action and a humanitarian, and his reply to my question as to
why he had never sought to justify his action in laying down arms
at Isaszeg and clear himself from the accusation of treachery
was typical of the nobility of the man.

*^My boy,” he said, and there was a smile of sadness and
resignation on his lips. “Before the Habsburgs and the world
Hungary must not be defeated, but betrayed. And therefore it
was my duty to bear the odium of having been the traitor.”

Only a man of real greatness and strength of character is
capable of such unselfishness. Goergei lived for sixty years after
his fateful decision at Isaszeg and in that whole period he never
once publicly opened his mouth to defend his honour. But in
that time, too, passions died down, and without any action on
his part Hungarians gradually came to a different judgment on
the old man in Visegrad. And when he died in 1907 a whole
nation mourned as his coffin was lowered into the grave. The
wheel has turned full circle since Isaszeg: to-day Goergei’s
effigy is on Hungary’s stamps as a national hero.

CHAPTER IV

STRASSBURG AND BERLIN

As SOON AS the season in Rajecz ended off I went on my medical
travels, having earned enough by dint of very hard work to

61

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

keep myself in modest independence during my post-graduate
studies and research work. My first stop was Strassburg, which
had been torn from France as a result of the 1870-71 war. It
was Reichsland, but that did not prevent the Prussians con-
ducting themselves at the expense of the other German States
as though it were Prussian territory. In order to make the Reich
popular and at the same time annoy the French by effective
competition on their own doorstep, a special cult of art and
science was developed in the annexed provinces, and the Uni-
versity of Strassburg was honoured with the most brilliant
luminaries of the Reich. That was a source of attraction for me,
and, in addition, the town was very favourably situated for
rapid flight if I found myself bored and disappointed after all :
in five hours I could be in Paris, and in three in Basle or Heidel-
berg. Freiburg and Nancy were not far away, whilst the Vosges
and the Black Forest were near enough for a week-end trip.

There were many famous men in Strassburg from whom to
learn, and I set up my headquarters in the medical clinic of
Professor Bernhard Naunyn, who was one of the foremost pupils
of Frerichs, the real father of clinical experiment. Almost all
the leading clinical specialists of those days were men of
Frerich’s school, but by that time most of them had passed their
zenith and were gradually making way for the next generation,
men who were largely their pupils. But Frerichs’ spirit still
prevailed everywhere, and with much exaggeration but some
justice the school was charged with producing specialists for
guinea-pigs rather than for human ailments. It was in this
period that most of the new departures in medicine came about,
but they were largely perfected in the laboratory on animals.
The biggest mistake these enthusiasts made was to transfer
their experimental experiences with animals to human beings
altogether too uncritically. The development in this respect
went parallel with physiological research, which received its
greatest impulse from the work of the Leipzig physiologist
Ludwig. After his death almost all the physiological chairs
were occupied by his pupils, and right down to the present day
the modem German medical school must be traced back either
directly or indirectly to three names: Frerichs, Ludwig and
Virchow. Of course, this does not mean that the pioneer work

Science^ Politics and Personalities

of men like Traube in clinical experiment, or of Johannes
Mueller in Berlin, were without influence on the general
development, but the fact remains that for my two special fields,
physiology and clinical experiment, Frerichs and Ludwig and
their successors were decisive.

Frerichs was a daring and imaginative scientist, but not a
very admirable or agreeable personality. He was an envious
man, unwilling to giye credit to others. In material matters he
was very much alive to his own interests. He had an agreement
with the famous banker Bleichroeder according to which he
attended without fee to the banker’s medical well-being, whilst
in return Bleichroeder attended with equal zeal to the doctor’s
financial advantage. The agreement worked out very favour-
ably for the pair of them : Under Frerichs’ care Breichroeder
lived to a ripe old age, and when Frerichs himself was gathered
to his fathers he left a very pretty estate behind him. But his
envy of another’s well-being went beyond the grave, and in his
will he inserted a clause providing that his young widow should
lose all benefit from the estate should she marry again. He was
not so clever this time, for the merry widow knew a trick worth
two of that, and she refused to let it embitter her life — and few
of those who knew Frerichs personally felt inclined to blame her.

But leaving aside the question of Frerichs’ personal character
we owe him our first real knowledge concerning diseases of the
liver. He did not hesitate to extend the field of his experiments
from the animal world to human beings, but it is only fair to
say — and I believe it to be true — that he conducted such
experiments only when conditions were such that no harm
could result. As far as I am concerned I prefer self-experimenta-
tion (and medical history has many heroic examples to offer)
to what is usually conducted on an unwilling, or at least a not-
willing victim who doesn’t know exactly what is taking place.
English medical history is particularly rich in examples of self-
experimentation, though perhaps one of the reasons for this is
that vivisection is surrounded for sentimental* reasons with all
sorts of difficulties. Self-experimentation, even when it is under-
taken with every possible care and safeguard, and goes well,
is still a heroic act. For instance, Pettenkofer refused to accept
the bacillus theory of the cause of cholera and held to his own

63

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

idea of sub-soil water. So to put the matter to the test he drank
a glass of water infected with virulent cholera germs, and
remained sound. But PettenkofFer was obstinate and he defied
death successfully. Another case had a less satisfactory ending.
The Viennese clinical specialist Mueller experimented with
plague germs and unfortunately they killed him.

Whether experiments on human beings should ever be con-
ducted is a much-disputed question. I believe that as long as
medical research continues such experiments will be necessary
as the crowning test. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it,
but the truth is that almost every operative interference is by
way of being an experiment, no matter how many times the
same thing, or apparently the same thing, has been done before.
The general public is inclined, in effect, to accept this stand-
point by its insistence, and very proper insistence, that “'each
patient should be treated as a special case”. Experience in
operative intervention will always reduce the danger, and an
ever-careful approach even in accustomed operations will
reduce the risk, but in the last resort every operative inter-
vention will still remain an experiment.

Let us take the comparatively simple and uncomplicated
example of the normal operation for appendicitis. The first
operations were carried out by Sonnenburg, a Berlin surgeon,
and in the beginning the mortality rate was rather more than
50 per cent. But, and this factor should never be forgotten,
each victim contributed to the reduction of the mortality rate
in appendicitis operations to the present low level of rather
less than 0*5 per cent. Every single operation in those early
days was an experiment on a human being, an experiment
which served the common cause of humanity. Only recently
50 per cent of a certain number of pneumonia cases were
treated with a n6w and, as it proved, very effective specific.
That too was an experiment on human beings, and a highly
successful one, but it is quite clear that the extra mortality
rate which showed itself amongst the 50 per cent, not treated
with the new methods could have been avoided. Personally I
consider this sort of demonstration rather exaggerated and
unnecessary, but I should not like to have to draw the line
myself. It would be too difficult to say just where it should be
64

Science^ Politics and Personalities

drawn in order on the one hand to do no harm to patients and,
on the other, not to hamper the cause of scientific progress. No
matter what land of human development may be in question
there will always be some who benefit by it (if it is real progress,
then the majority will benefit) and others who suffer.

But in this matter there is one thing against which I have
always sternly set my face, and that is the tendency to regard
poor patients in public clinics as so much experimental material,
to regard experiments made on them as quasi as of right in
return for their keep and the medical attentioii . given them,
which, in the normal way, they are unable to pay for like their
better-situated fellow su&rers. This unfortunately quite wide-
spread form of “class distinction’’ is one the new social justice for
which we hope must ruthlessly abolish.

Frerichs himself was an experimentor on human beings, but
his school concentrated on vivisection. In my opinion vivi-
section is necessary in the cause of medical progress. Making
all allowances for due sentiment I feel that if sacrifices must be
made in the cause of scientific progress then it is better that they
should be animal rather than human sacrifices. To place the
protection of animals above the protection of human beings is
truly fatuous.

Naunyn was an orthodox pupil of Frerichs, and we owe much
to him with regard to the pathology of diseases of the liver and
the spleen, and the origin of gall stones, but his chief service
was perhaps in the investigation of diabetes. It was in his clinic
and under his supervision that his assistants, Mehring and
Minkowsky, who afterwards both became famous, conducted
experiments on dogs whose pancreas had been removed in order
to make them diabetic. As a result of these experiments much
light was cast not only on the problem of diabetes, but also on
the problems of animal metabolism. But, above all, it was due
to these famous experiments that insulin, a boon to diabetic
mankind, was discovered.

Naunyn was a devoted and enthusiastic scientist, but a poor
doctor. For him sickness was an experiment by nature. He
was keenly interested in sickness, but not in sick people, or only
in so far as his diagnosis of their trouble turned out to be right.
He was an intuitive diagnostician and a brilliant one. In all
c 65

Jams, The Story of a Doctor

the years I worked at his clinic I cannot remember having been
present at a single dissection which did not confirm his diag-
nosis. Naunyn had no real success as a teacher, and his lectures
were usually very poorly attended, but for those who worked
closely with him he was a fount of ideas and a remarkable
inspiration on all fields of medicine. He was capable of much
patience with his students, and he always showed great under-
standing and encouragement for any new idea.

It was at this period that the scientific world was revolution-
ized by the discovery of radium and polonium, and as a matter of
course I was keenly interested in the medical application of this
epoch-making discovery. Naunyn found me worthy of sending
to Paris as his representative to visit the Curies and find out on
the spot the exact state of this newly born branch of science,
radio-activity. That was how I came to Paris. My first visit
was paid to the father of the newly discovered rays, Becquerel,
Professor of Physics at the Sorbonne, who handed me over to
one of his assistants for a short course.

Becquerel was one of those cultivated Frenchmen whose
politeness and willingness to be of assistance were as evident as
the extreme neatness and elegance of their personal appearance.
He was a small man with friendly twinkling eyes and a short
full beard parted in the centre and brushed to each side so
carefully that each hair seemed to be in its appointed place.
The crease of his trousers was like a razor, and his black
morning coat sat on him as though he had been poured into it.
His voice was soft and agreeable and he explained everything
with great amiability and helpfulness. During his explanation
he opened a drawer of his writing-desk and showed me the
exact accidental juxtaposition which had led to the discovery of
radium. There was the cardboard box with the photographic
plates, then the key that lay on top, and then the amorphous
lump of pitchblende which photographed the shape of the key
on to the undeveloped plate in the box.

The penetrating ray was found. It was the Curies who had
the brifidant idea of separating all non-active substances from
the pitchblende until nothing remained but the pure radiating
medium itself. How simple that sounds! And what super-
human persistence in the face of aU difficulties, what subtility of
66

Science^ Politics and Personalities

intelligence, what unshakable conviction and determination
were necessary before the final triumphant apotheosis !

Becquerel gave me their address and a letter of introduction —
the laboratory was situated in the building of an Industrial
School’’ somewhere out in the suburbs — and I set off to find
them. I don’t quite know what I expected, but I was shocked
when I got there. In the courtyard of the school was an
erection, more like a shack than a laboratory, with small
windows and a door which led direct into the interior. The
place was fairly roomy, about 8o' X 25', and heated by a
primitive iron stove in the middle. There were tables under the
windows, and one corner seemed to be full of various apparatus.
The flooring was of wood and defective in many places. Alto-
gether the place was a miserable hole and quite unworthy of
being such a research laboratory. I have heard it suggested that
the Curies would probably not have been able to work so
brilliantly in a modem laboratory, and it is certainly true that
very often the saying: Grand laboratory: poor work; poor
laboratory : grand work, has proved true.

When I entered this ramshackle place a tall rather elderly
man with rounded shoulders wearing a laboratory overall
turned to me. It was Pierre Curie. I introduced myself
with the letter Becquerel had given me and Curie then
took me into the far corner of the gloomy laboratory, and
presented me to a woman of medium height wearing a simple
blouse and dark skirt. She had a typically Slav face with rosy
cheeks and high cheek-bones, and her hair was parted very
simply in the middle. This was Madame Curie. She welcomed
me amiably and immediately proceeded to explain everything
I wanted to know. It was one of the greatest moments of my
scientific life when on her electroscope I observed the varied
ionization produced by the preparation in different strengths.
After that memorable day I visited the laboratory regularly,
chiefly in order to master the technique of measurement. At
that time the interest of even the scientific world in the new
discovery seemed not to be very great, and often I was the only
visitor. Ever since 4:hen I have always retained a lively interest
in radio-active matter, with the result that in 1912 I was able
to publish the results of my own work on the physiological and

67

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

pathological influences of radio-active substances^ Since then
my conclusions have not been fundamentally extended or
corrected and they still hold good in the case of the atom bomb.
The influence on blood formation and diseases of the blood
which I discovered received some notice at the time and since
then I have often been called in both as lecturer and consultant
on this field.

• However, the investigation of radio-activity was only one
part of my general plans for my future activity. My ideas had
received practical confirmation during my work in Goerbers-
dorf and afterwards in Rajecz. I told myself that the heroic
specifics of medicine were as old as humanity itself, and that
the root of all methods of treatment was to be found in the
general fund of popular medical knowledge. No matter what
brilliant progress may still lie ahead of medical science, this
absolute minimum in the treatment of patients will never be
dispensable. The supporting pillars of the whole medical
edifice will always be : bleeding, purging, fasting, vomiting and
sweating.

Let me explain in greater detail. The justification and validity
of these five specifics in the treatment of human illness have never
been disputed or even doubted by any sensible doctor from the
time when Moses received the first written code. But their
indiscriminate application is a very different matter and has
often caused much harm. Scientific investigation must therefore
lay down indications for their application by studying the basis
of their effect. With this programme before me it was obvious
that I was never going to be embarrassed by lack of any
practical problems to study. On the other hand it was equally
clear that it meant a life’s work. A life’s work did I say? No,
the life’s work of many, many men, and one calculated to keep
them breathless with interest throughout. The first task in the
huge complex that I picked out for myself was to study the basis
on which bleeding secured its beneficent results.

When I began to look around me for points from which I
could start my work all I could find was a few quite inadequate
indications concerning the dynamics of the circulation of the
blood. There was no satisfactory information concerning cir-
culation magnitudes in the living human organism. New
68

Science^ Politics and Personalities

methods and new ideas proved necessary before a satisfactory
approach to the problem could be found. What quantity of
blood was there in the living organism? What volume of blood
was emptied with each heart-beat? What was the speed of its
circulation? How long did it take to complete the full cycle?
These and many other questions connected with the function
and performance of the heart remained to be answered. After
seven years of hard work I was at last able to publish my
‘‘Haemodynamics”. The book was the result of systematic
studies about which I had first begun to ponder in Goerbers-
dorf, though, of course, such difficult and complicated problems
needed very thorough preliminary training and a great deal of
specialized research before it was possible to approach them
with any hope of success. I was only twenty- two in Goer-
bersdorf, and very conscious that I lacked a really sound
scientific clinical training.

Apart from Naunyn there were three other professors in
Strassburg whose work interested me greatly : the pathological
anatomist Recklinghausen, the pharmacologist Schmiedeberg,
and the bio-chemist Hofmeister. The hospitality of the scien-
tific institutions there was beyond reproach, and all the pro-
fessors proved extremely willing to help me. In addition, student
life in Strassburg was interesting and varied, more like Paris
than Berlin. Apart from the official fagade, the Germanization
policy had made very little progress. In their hearts the
Alsatians remained French, and the Prussians were totally
foreign to them. The old habits, customs and celebrations
remained untouched. In private life the immigrant German
was not only tolerant of the ways of the people amongst whom
he had come to live, but he even let himself be willingly
assimilated — ^for a pleasant change, if for no other reason, for
what he found there was more attractive than what he was
accustomed to. The result was that the Germans enthusiastic-
ally joined in the celebrations in the Orangery, and in the
carnival on the streets ; in fact the Germans were, if anything, a
trifle more enthusiastic than even the local inhabitants. In
the thirty years of their rule the Germans had achieved prac-
tically nothing of any fundamental importance ; the Alsatians
remained French, and every attempt to Germanize them failed

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

in face of their determined patriotic, nationalistic and even
particularist outlook. Whoever rules this little country in the
future will achieve nothing without granting its inhabitants a
very considerable degree of autonomy. Even scientific methods
remained largely French despite the great personalities Ger-
many had sent as her representatives, but the final result was a
very happy alliance of French imagination and German
reliability and thoroughness.

It was during this period that clinical science experienced a
crisis ; it was leaving the sick-bed for the laboratory. The keen
eye and intuitive feeling of the doctor at the sick-bed was to be
replaced by the impersonal objectivity of the laboratory. That
therapeutic nihilism which had already triumphed in the
Vienna school of Oppolzer and Bamberger was being furthered
to the utmost by Schmiedeberg and his school. Pharmacological
experience gained with human patients was dismissed with
contempt ; the only really important thing was the outcome of
experiments on animals. The result was that the professional
pharmacologists deprived the doctor of more medicines than
they left him, and the science of pharmacology sank to the level
of a very inadequate experimental physiology, a tendency from
which it suffers to this day. There is, of course, no doubt that
this line of research threw a lot of old and unnecessary ballast
overboard, but it also gave us stones instead of bread for a long
time, to the great detriment of the art of healing.

Hofmeister’s chief service was the systematization of bio-
chemistry, and it is more or less on the basis he laid that the
science of bio-chemistry still stands to-day.

The anatomist Recklinghausen was a little man with a
bluish-red complexion, a short beard, large spectacles — and an
ebullient temperament. He was a typical bantam fighting cock
and tore into everything that opposed his own ideas, but there
is no doubt that he greatly enriched the science of medicine.
He destroyed a lot of comfortable old ideas, but he contributed
much that was new and valuable. In those intolerant days of
bacteriology pure and simple he and the Breslau clinical
specialist Ottomar Rosenbach were alone in insisting on the
importance of both constitution and disposition in the aetiology
of infectious diseases.

70

Science^ Politics and Personalities

The battle concerning the origin of tubercular diseases was
at its height, and Recklinghausen took part in it with great
glee and vigour. He refused to admit bacteria as the cause, and
he compared the visible tubercular knots in which here and
there a bacillus could be found with the pyramidal cavalry
droppings which were to be found everywhere in those days
before the final triumph of the internal combustion engine.
When the interested observer arrived the horse had gone on, he
declared — but the sparrow on the heap was always there. To
suppose that the bacillus produced the tubercular knot was as
false as to suppose that the sparrow produced the dung.
Tubercular disease was not directly caused by a bacillus.
Recklinghausen may not have been right with his earthy
arguments, but at least his vigorous opposition did one good
thing: it effectively breached the solid wall of monomaniac
bacteriological thought, and it became rather less than a
sacrilege to look to left and right for other factors than bacterio-
logical ones to explain disease. In fact the whole furious dis-
cussion did much to bring us to the more liberal standpoint
prevalent to-day where the pathology of disposition is con-
cerned.

It was in Strassburg that the basis of my experimental
clinical training was laid. My studies there came to an end in a
rather surprising fashion. After my ^‘holiday” in Rajecz in 1902
I returned to Strassburg to continue my work with Naunyn as
usual when one day he asked me bluntly to tell him quite
frankly whether I had ever noticed any signs of approaching
senility in him. I was able to reply with a good conscience that
I never had. Naunyn was obviously relieved. “You see,
Janos,’’ he said. “The last thing in the world I want is to go
on too long and cling on like a limpet after my time. I’m going
to retire now and no one will be able to say I’m ga-ga. You’d
better look round for something else at the end of this term.
If you take my advice you’ll look for somebody who can appre-
ciate new ideas and be more help to you now than I can.
There’s a younger man in Graz called Friedrich Kraus. He’s
just written an article for my journal on Tatigue as a Measure
of Constitution’. His standpoint seems likely to open up new
avenues for clinical research because he deviates from the usual

71

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

topic-anatomic idea and places the functional factor in the
foreground. Go to him. Fll give you the warmest recom-
mendation.’’

In point of fact Naunyn’s decision was not quite so noble and
generous as it looked; there was an important arriere pensie.
The famous Berlin clinical specialist Karl Gerhardt had just
died of a stroke and an appointment to his chair was therefore
due. It was Naunyn’s dearest wish to work in Berlin, where his
father had once been a respected Lord Mayor, and he hoped to
be short-listed. However, the short list read : Friedrich Mueller
(Munich), Ludolf Krehl (Heidelberg), and Friedrich Kraus
(Graz). Mueller declined the honour; he preferred to stay in
Munich. Krehl was not really persona grata for what was after
all a military institute (the Berlin Charite) because in a delicate
domestic affair ‘Touching his honour” he had, quite rightly,
refused to fight a duel. And although Naunyn, a pupil of
Frerichs, felt himself greatly superior to either of these younger
men, both Gerhardt’s pupils, he was not considered for the
appointment on account of his age ; he was already sixty-four.
The Minister therefore had no alternative but to appoint the
next suitable candidate on the list, Kraus. Kraus was a
Sudeten Czech born in Bodenbach in Bohemia. It was altogether
a lucky business for me because it meant that I had not to work
in the narrow small-town atmosphere of Graz, and I went to
Kraus in Berlin immediately after his appointment, and
remained there for good. No, not for good, until Hitler came
and upset many things.

I was lucky in another respect too. I found Kraus a very
agreeable man to work under, and he remained my friend until
his death. I met him first in the gateway of the old Charite.
He was wearing a broad-brimmed soft hat, and a constant
smile and broad cheek-bones combined to turn his eyes into two
merry little slits. And on top of that his Bohemian potato nose
and long pointed beard gave him the appearance of the dwarfs
in suburban gardens. The little man had good humour written
all over his face, and there was absolutely nothing pompously
professional about him. He was without prejudices and his
thought was untrammelled. All that counted for him was, per-
formance — coupled with luck if possible. He liked to have
72

Science^ Politics and Personalities

fortunate people around him and he avoided the others as far
as he was able. He had been very lucky himself. The son of a
poor forester (who, incidentally, died of progressive paralysis),
he came into the world as a breach birth in the caul. Such
children are proverbially lucky. He knew poverty in his youth,
but as a student he found a powerful protector in Professor
Hofmeister, who was working in Prague at the time. His own
theoretical knowledge was very wide thanks to his own great
talent, his marvellous memory and his enormous industry. I
worked with him for thirty years, and in all that time I never
knew him to give a lecture without being thoroughly prepared
for it. His knowledge and information were right up to date, and
he would have regarded it as a calamity to run up against
anyone better informed than he was.

Hofmeister recommended Kraus to Professor Kahler, the
successor of Jaksch at the Prague University Clinic. Kahler
was spreading the lessons of Charcot in Central Eu^rope, and
himself enriched the science of neurology with his description
of new disease phenomena. After a few years in Prague Kahler
was called to Vienna to occupy the chair of internal medicine
at the University there, and he took Kraus, then his young and
talented assistant, with him. After about a year in Vienna
unmistakable signs of cancer of the tongue began to show them-
selves in Kahler and he was compelled to hand his lectures over
to Kraus, whose success as a teacher proved phenomenal. He
was not thirty at the time, and had he been a little older there
is no doubt that he and not Neusser would have been appointed
to Kahler’s vacant chair. He was made Primarius at the Rudolf
Hospital instead and later he had to console himself for ten
years with a professorship in Graz until at the age of forty-three
he was called to Berlin. His career is another example of the
great influence the sudden and unexpected decease of the man
in front can have on a career. His luck held. In that one respect
he was a superstitious man ; he believed in luck. If he forgot
anything he was afraid to go back and fetch it. If he acci-
dentally put on his sock inside out he was happy for the day,
and he never missed an opportunity of touching a sweep’s
sleeve or a hunchback’s shoulder in passing.

But that was where his intellectual limitation began and

73

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

ended. Otherwise he was a man of unusual breadth of intellect.
He was not one of those professors who seek to force their
assistants into their own mould and crush out any independent
ideas. On the contrary, he chose his assistants either because
they knew more than he did in certain specialized questions,
or, at the very least, because they had ideas of their own. In
this way he insured himself against intellectual stagnation.
More than once I have heard him declare that he learnt more
from his assistants than they did from him. In some respects
he was probably right, but the indisputable fact remains that
the solution of every problem was brought about under the
fruitful guidance of his general ideas. It was. his great know-
ledge and ability on so many and varied fields: physiology,
chemistry, physics, bacteriology and microscopy, which kept
us assistants above water in the rapidly moving stream of
scientific progress.

In those days Berlin was becoming something like the great
head and centre of scientific progress. Every new discovery had
to be examined and approved first of all by Berlin. The dis-
coverer invariably came to Berlin in person first and acquainted
us with his discovery and heard our opinions before venturing
before the public. I must say that this often caused a lot of
unnecessary time wasting, and it was not always profitable, but
at least it meant that we were being bombarded with new
scientific knowledge and experience and that we were willy-
nilly right up to the minute in our knowledge.

Many new branches of science and new special fields were
opened up at the beginning of the twentieth century. The intro-
duction of Roentgen rays drastically altered our old diagnostic
methods. Serology and immunology brought new opportunities
for therapeutics. Bacteriology, hygiene and public prophylactic
medicine did the same for medical science in general. It was
recognized even in those early days that certain harmless
bacterial products could be used to prevent the development of
pathogenic bacteria, and, for instance, pyocyanase was recom-
mended against strepto and staphyllococci, and it may therefore
be considered as the forerunner of penicillin. It was the science
of bio-chemistry which really started the great advance which
has since been made in the investigation of metabolism.

74

Science^ Politics and Personalities

This same period also saw the birth of chemotherapy which
led from methylene blue over salvarsan to the present-day
triumph of sulphathiazol preparations. In those days we knew
a little about the thyroid and sexual glands, and Brown Sequard
and Ernest Starling were still in the future. It was the systematic
investigation into the problem of hormones, or endocrinology,
which raised the veil and gave us our present-day knowledge.

And then there was the new field of study : vitamins. One
can truthfully say that medicine has earned the name of a
science during the past forty years. For young and eager minds
those early days were exciting. Whoever had the opportunity
of watching the wildly boiling pot was a lucky man, particu-
larly if he were able to do a little modest cooking on his own
account. Perhaps we were too enthusiastic and too hopeful in
those days. Since then we have achieved a greater distance and
learned to judge things more objectively. In this we were
much helped from time to time by unexpected hard blows
and knocks which took the over-eager edge off our enthusiasm
and made us more cautious. We were right close up. It is a
notorious fact that all things look different from a distance,
whether of time or space.

But I can say that for thirty years I had the great good fortune
to live in close contact with pioneers and discoverers. And I
was particularly happy to observe that this development was a
popular one in the truest sense of the word and aroused the
interest of an increasingly large section of the general public.
The quest for knowledge was stripped of all mediaeval mysticism
and brought out into the light of common-sense day. The
general public became interested in our problems because our
discussions were openly conducted in the full light of criticism,
and not jealously hidden behind closed doors. It is quite false
and wholly deleterious to attempt to keep the general public
in blinkers, and fortunately there is less self-important secrecy
amongst scientists to-day than ever before.

Every prominent philosopher, physicist, and mathematician
has his Boswell to-day, and he runs no risk of being dubbed a
publicity hound in consequence. Only miserable envy and
petty jealousy now stand in the way of popularization. I know
all the so-called ethical and moral arguments in favour of

75

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

drawn blinds, but no advantage of such a policy remotely
outweighs the dangers of deliberate mystification. Voltaire has
assured us that even the Highest needs publicity — hence he has
the church bells rung. Science certainly needs publicity, and I
am very glad to see that the idea of scientific publicity is
making great strides in England too, and that prominent
representatives of science are filled with misgiving at the scant
attention the newspapers pay to scientific matters. On the
Continent the old inbred fear of consulting a doctor is quite
dead amongst the masses of the people ; they go willingly to the
doctor and they follow his advice. In consequence the general
health of the people is, other things being equal, much higher
than it was, and this beneficent result is a by-product of the
increasing respect for scientific achievement, whose develop-
ment the present generations have been privileged to follow
freely. The names of capable doctors and other scientific men
should be publicized every bit as much as those of prominent
generals. The general public should know who they have to
thank — and why they have to thank him.

Of course, the Berlin Charite was not the only vantage point
from which one could follow the rapid development closely. In
pursuing my own ideas I needed certain special equipment and
certain special training, for instance in experimental physiology
and gas analysis. The two most prominent names in this
respect were Haldane in England and Zuntz on the Continent.
The most convenient for me was Zuntz, who was professor of
animal physiology at the Agricultural High School in Berlin.
He was a bald-headed little man with an untidy beard and the
proverbial large professorial glasses. He wa& also a man of
deep and wide knowledge ; a very critical master, but a just one.
His reliability was absolute, and his experimental technique
was unequalled. His greatest service to scientific inquiry was
to have laid the basis for our knowledge of respiratory analysis
and gas metabolism. It was he who discovered the affinity of
carbonoxide with the haemochromes. I would go so far as to say
that he was the last great physiologist of our day. None of his
successors has his capacity for mastering all facets of the science
of physiology. He knew as much about sense physiology as he

did about electro-physiology or the physiology of respiration
76

Science^ Politics and Personalities

and circulation. To-day these various fields have become
specialized because it seems impossible for one man to master
them all. But Zuntz could and did. Despite his importance
and the undisputed recognition he had won in the world of
science he never ceased to be the Jew of Lessing’s day, the Wise
Nathan (his namesake incidentally) who asked with humility
for permission to enter the halls of science.

The institutional equipment of the Agricultural High School
was mean and miserable in the extreme, but Zuntz saw to it
that everything absolutely necessary was available — or could
be improvised. I can’t remember any ready-made apparatus
in the institute ; it all had to be worked out and laboriously put
together when needed. The animal cages were in the laboratory.
Dismantled apparatus threatened to fall down on one’s head.
There were great cracks in the floor full of spilt quick-
silver, and proper cleaning was impossible. Who would have
dared to touch the extremely delicate and brittle instruments?
But this wretched place was full of eager scientists from all over
the world, and amidst all the chaos most remarkable discoveries
were made and most valuable scientific work done. It was much
the same with the miserable barn of a place the Curies had to
work in. Zuntz was the pride of the Agricultural High School
and fortunately the Ministerial official in charge knew his
worth and supported him as far as he was able. Whether this
was from a feeling of shame that foreign scientists should come
and see him working in such deplorable conditions or not I
don’t know, but at long last this permanent official — ^his name
was Thiel — managed to get permission to provide Zuntz with a
new laboratory specially built for him with the last word in
modern technical apparatus.

I remember how we all trooped into our new scientific abode
and looked around. It really was the last word in efficiency,
no doubt about it, but it wasn’t comfortable; it wasn’t friendly
and familiar, and it had no atmosphere. It takes some time
before you can settle down in circumstances of that sort.
Nothing is in its accustomed place. Even the accustomed place
isn’t there. The general routine is disturbed and you get quite
nervous and distracted. It was I who broke the inhibiting spell.
By a horrible accident. I dropped a bottle of concentrated

77

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

sulphuric acid on the highly-polished parquet flooring. In a
trice the corrosive liquid gnawed its way into the wood; not
only in the pool where I had dropped the bottle, but all over
the place, where it had splashed far and wide. I was paralysed
with fright and my heart sank as Zuntz rushed up. I prepared to
bow humbly to the storm of reproaches. Instead of that dear
old Zuntz surveyed the damage, slapped his thigh and beamed
with delight.

“Thank God for that,’’ he said. “Now we can work in peace
without bothering about scratching this or damaging that.
Phew, what a relief!”

After that we settled down comfortably and the old easy-
going and so fruitful atmosphere returned. I continued my
studies with unflagging enthusiasm until in 1909, after seven
years hard, but joyful labour, I was able to publish my mono-
graph on haemodynamics. But that was by no means all I
did in that period. My clinical work was not neglected. At
7.30 sharp in the morning I was in the Charite, and I stayed
there working until one. From one to three I worked in Pro-
fessor Heymann’s Polyclinic for ear, nose and throat diseases.
And after that I worked late into the night in the Physiological
Laboratory, to which I was privileged to possess a night key.
My meals? Yes, of course, I did eat, but they had to be taken
at convenient, which meant very odd, times.

That was a long period of very hard work, but looking back
on it I can say that it was one of the most satisfactory and there-
fore one of the happiest periods of my life. I overworked, it is
clear, but I was young and my health was perfect, and so the
lack of sleep and the irregularity of my meals have long been
forgotten, whilst the fruits of my labour have remained. It was
during this period that I laid the basis of my subsequent reputa-
tion in the scientific world, and I had not long to wait for
recognition. Soon after the appearance of my work on haemo-
dynamics I was given permission to practise on my own as a
doctor in Germany without taking the usual examination. This
concession was motivated by a reference to my “acknowledged
scientific achievements”. My deep satisfaction can be imagined.
I was then appointed Privat-Dozent at the University of
Berlin, that is to say as a Lecturer not formally salaried and
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

on the permanent faculty. The years of scientific wandering
seemed at an end.

CHAPTER V

THE PRACTICAL YEARS

To SETTLE DOWN in Berlin made a great change in my life.
For one thing it meant the end of Rajecz for me. However, my
new life was far too busy to give me any time for nostalgic
regrets. From the very first day of it I was, without exaggeration,
one of the busiest doctors in Berlin. Kraus dominated the con-
sulting practice of Europe, and he was very glad to have some-
one to whom he could pass on some of his work with confidence.
I was treated like a son in his house, and in his absence he left
his wife and three daughters in my care in medical and in other
matters. But over and above his real liking for me he greatly
valued my therapeutic abilities and thought highly of the great
practical experience I had obtained in Rajecz, and, further, as
the result of years of intimate co-operation we were closely
attuned in scientific matters. It was never necessary for me to
explain any new ideas at length to him ; our fund of know-
ledge and experience had become so common, and we could
take so much for granted, that a word replaced a phrase,
and a phrase a whole rigmarole. And then we were both
strangers in Berlin. He was an Austrian (a Czech if you like)
and he had little sympathy with his Prussian environment,
but with me, as a Hungarian, he had many points of contact.
When he was in my company he could let himself go, and laugh
and joke hilariously, with no respect for the stiff professorial
dignity the Prussians expected of a man in his position. We
were happier together over a glass of good wine and a Hun-
garian Salami or a dish of goulash than with all the carefully
prepared delicacies of a formal banquet.

He was never ill, and the only thing that ever troubled him
was the chronic rheumatism he had contracted in the dank
hospital wards in Prague, and which resulted in a certain
deformation of his hands. He lived to be seventy-eight and he
never bothered in the least about his health. He was the nearest

79

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

approach to the purely carnivorous homo sapiens I have ever
met. He consumed enormous quantities of meat, treated all
vegetables with contempt, and had an insatiable appetite for
the sweet puddings and pastries of his Bohemian homeland. If
all the holidays he ever took in his life were added together I
don’t suppose they would have amounted to more than six
months all told. His way of living was almost purely sedentary
and he never took any exercise as such at any time. In fact his
life was one long gesture of contempt for all the hygienic rules
and regulations we doctors lay down for people desirous of
extending their lives to the greatest possible span. In the end it
was an accident which finished him. He fell down and broke a
leg. That laid him on his back for a long time and he developed
a decubital abscess. But for that he would have lived even
longer than he did. In any case, seventy-eight is not a bad age
to reach.

Don’t ask me to explain the mystery, and don’t seek to
obtain the same results with the same methods. Incidentally,
he was by no means the only one amongst the many famous
and long-lived medical men I have known who lived without
any consideration for their health. There was the surgeon
Bergmann, the anatomist Waldeyer, the physiologist Rubner
and the clinical specialist von Noorden. They all disregarded
hygienic rules, ate and drank as they pleased, and worked like
slaves — ^no, much harder than slaves. And they all lived to a
biblical old age. The human organism can be compared to a
machine in this respect: the cog-wheels turn and intermesh;
there is friction ; they wear out in time. But well-made wheels
of the hardest steel last longer than defective wheels of softer
metal. The weaker vessels must be preserved by care and
systematic attention. The strong ones stand up to any amount
of use, and even misuse, without breaking.

Kraus was a fascinating personality. He was as popular
amongst his colleagues as he was with his patients, and his
influence both in the Faculty and the Ministry was very great.
It was primarily due to his influence that the all-powerful
permanent official Althoff put through the rebuilding of the
Charite and the Medical Clinic. I was permitted to give advice
and offer suggestions in the working out of the plans, and this

8o

Science^ Politics and Personalities

regard for the practical experience of men like myself proved
most fruitful, and a number of new departures were introduced
which proved very valuable later.

Since those days, of course, my experience has considerably
widened, and to-day my suggestions would go much farther.
For one thing, I feel that past experience should persuade us
never to build any hospital or other scientific institution to last
more than fifty years at the very outside. After that, if not
before, it is quite out of date and usable only faute de mieux.
Even at that time we were trying to get away from the traditional
depressing and solemn style of hospital architecture. Sickness
in itself lowers the spirits, so why on earth the general appear-
ance of a hospital should be such as to aggravate the process I
have never been able to see. It certainly need not be so. It
is not impossible to combine hygiene, cleanliness and medical
efficiency with pleasant colours, agreeable surroundings and
an atmosphere in which the patients can feel, if not exactly
'^at home”, then, at least, not in a dismal, depressing institu-
tional sort of place, much like a prison, from which they can
feel lucky if they escape alive. There is no reason at all why
the fagade of a hospital should be a dismal cross between a work-
house and an architecturally degenerate temple. There is no
reason in the world why its lines should not be agreeable and
prepossessing, so that if it is too much to expect that patients
should enter with delight, at least they might enter with less
fear than they do at present through its forbidding doors. More
is done in our day to raise the spirits of the people than in any
other; why not do just a little for that section of the community
which needs it more than any other?

In our ideas about sickness and death we are gradually
beginning to turn our backs on the Middle Ages, which, in this
respect as in so many others, harshly rejected the serener,
happier outlook of classic antiquity and burdened the human
spirit with a load of fears and horrors. No horribly grimacing
skeleton choked the last breath of the dying Greek ; it was a kiss,
a light caress, that took life from his lips. And the hand that
held the torch of genius slowly relaxed and fell.

The Greek attitude to life — and death — ^was a nobler one,
but in the Middle Ages it fell with art and letters into dis-

8i

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

repute and, finally, forgetfulness, and its place was taken by an
atmosphere of horror and suffering. The tortures of the damned
and the sufferings of the martyrs were dwelt on in every detail
and with every evidence of lustful delight. St. Lawrence was
incomplete without his red-hot grill, and St. Sebastian was not
right unless shot full of arrows like a porcupine. And oh the lice,
the filth and the resultant horrible skin diseases ! Our day is
again a healthier one. The tide is definitely flovfing the other
way. We seek not only to reduce human suffering, but to
deprive death itself of its horrqr, its tragedy and even its pathos.
When Socrates took the hemlock he veiled his face. It was an
esthetic demonstration; none should see the pain that con-
torted his features. An Ibsen character in our own day desired
to ‘‘die in beauty”. And the dying artist Dubedat in Shaw’s
“The Doctor’s Dilemma” insists that his young wife shall wear
no mourning for him, but put on her prettiest frock. And it is
in this spirit that we should reform our hospitals, make them
less depressing and gloomy, make them more beautiful and
friendly. And let it not be thought that this is merely a question
of philosophy and aesthetics ; it has its quite severely practical
side : it is easier to heal a man whose spirits are high than one
whose spirits are depressed.

In the worst case the hospital is the stage before death; in
the best it is a haven to which the sufferer puts in for restora-
tion. In either case the general appearance of a hospital need
not be more depressing than the thought of death itself. It
so often is. Even vinegary old Virchow had a word of comfort
and consolation to offer. Over the entrance to his anatomic
clinic stood the words locus est^ ubi mors gaudet succurere
vita^\ Unfortunately in those early days it -was not possible
to break down the bad old traditions and prejudices altogether.
Let us hope that in the future all new hospitals will shed the
ponderous and heavy lines intended apparently to overawe,
and impress us with the solemn nature of the tasks performed
within their grim walls. Let our architects forget the temple
tradition — ^unless they care to return to it in the still older sense,
and design us temples of art ; in this case the art of healing.

Kraus, Zuntz and Heymann all willingly helped me to start
my practice, but once in the saddle I did the riding myself.

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

It was good that way, I hope my future disappointed none of
them, though it never entirely satisfied me. When I look back
to-day and ask myself in what particular way I did by best work,

I think I can say that it was in my direct relationship with my
patients. Regular contact with the demands of life gave me
more pleasure than occupying myself with pure theory, which
tends to be arid. My most fruitful ideas came from the close
observation of sick people. When I set to work to follow them
up I was not hypocritical enough to pretend that I was driven
by an impulse to help suffering humanity. I am sure that the
primary impulse of a man who sets himself to solve such
problems is not altruistic. If he has it in him he just has
to solve his problems — just as the poet must write poetry,
and the musician compose music. It is their destiny. If what
a man does benefits humanity he can don the moral cloak if he
wants to, but it is not altogether honest. The scientific inves-
tigator is neither an altruist nor a philanthropist. He is driven
by something of the same urge which moves the crossword
enthusiasts. He is in its grip. And it is quite fatuous to call him
‘Hireless”, as people so often do. He is not tireless, but the
problem that seizes on him is, and it never lets him go until
the end, his end.

There is nothing more fascinating than to observe the process
of life adapting itself to new conditions, fighting to create a new
and workable balance. The process of falling ill and the process
of getting well are one and the same process ; only the direction
is different. The highest aim of the human or animal organism
is to keep itself alive. In this constant struggle it uses its forces
only as it must ; it never uses more strength than the situation
demands, and it always holds the greatest possible strength in
reserve until the critical moment, and then it mobilizes every
ounce of available energy to overcome the crisis and fulfil its
ultimate task. To take a practical example: in an epileptic fit.
there is a serious danger to life itself: everything seems to be in
the grip of a kind of cramp, the circulation fails, there are no
reactions, the breath itself is caught — and just when one is
beginning to fear that the end is at hand there is a sudden
relaxation, the danger has been overcome, and after a short
pause the patient is able to get up and go home.

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

What restored life to him? I have seen many people fall
into a faint, but I doubt whether it was my efforts that really
brought them round. Without any outside help they would
have come round on their own. But here too the doctor can help
himself out of the embarrassment with the old tag : post hoc. . . .
This is not the place to write an abstruse dissertation on path-
ology. I want to be understood by everybody, and I should hate
to be one of those of whom the Viennese philosopher declared :
“Many scientists are right — until they are understood’’. My
only aim here has been to indicate why I have retained a
practice down to the present day without being in any way
dependent on it.

CHAPTER VI

SCHAUDINN, WASSERMANN AND EHRLICH

Many changes had taken place in Berlin since I had gone
there as an eager young student. The teachers of the Faculty
were almost all new men. Leyden was dead, and Wilhelm
His was now head of the First Medical Clinic, with Senator
in charge of the Third Medical Clinic. The surgeons Ernst von
Bergmann and Koenig had gone, and August Bier and Hilde-
brand were in their places. The physiologist v/as Engelmann
of Holland. Bumm of Basle had been appointed in place of
the gynaecologist Olshausen. Adalbert Czerny of Prague was the
successor of Heubner for children’s diseases, and Virchow’s
successor in the chair of pathological anatomy was Johannes
Orth.

Each of these names is that of a pioneer in the development of
modern medicine, and apart from them there were many other
men of ability and importance employed in the ordinary urban
'hospitals and medical institutions. Pioneers of new sciences and
new processes were at work outside the university, for instance
the haematologists Lazarus, Pappenheim and Grawitz. Litten
was describing new disease symptoms. Albert Fraenkel was
specializing in pulmonary diseases. Working together, Ewald
and Boas advanced digestive pathology by introducing test
meals. Fuerbringer was a courageous sexual investigator;

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

Goldscheider and Oppenheim neurologists of importance.
Finkelstein and Baginsky were laying the basis of our modern
infant-feeding methods. Klemperer’s propaedeutic clinic was a
highly successful teaching centre. Hirschberg was upholding
the great heritage of Graefe in ophthalmics. Amongst the
surgeons were Fedor Krause, who was the first to operate in
eases of epilepsy and neuralgia; Koerte, who made real
progress in bone and joint surgery; Sonnenburg, who specialized
in bowel operations; Nitze, the inventor of the cystoscope;
Izrael, who wrote a fundamental monograph on surgical inter-
vention in kidney diseases ; and Schleich, who introduced local
anaesthesia. These are by no means all the names of importance
whose owners were at work in Berlin then and with whom I had
the opportunity of associating not only professionally but also
socially. All in all it was an epoch of rapid new developments,
including the building of what was then the biggest and finest
hospital in the world, named after Virchow.

Many important discoveries were made, some of them
epoch-making — ^for instance, the discovery and development of
salvarsan by Paul Ehrlich, whose work aroused tremendous
interest all over the world. At last an effective means had been
found of overcoming one of the worst enemies of mankind. But
salvarsan was even more than a specific against syphilis ; it was a
general specific against all forms of „spirochaetes, and therefore
offered a cure for all the diseases caused by this form of bacteria.
The triumphs of the new treatment spread over the whole
world, and before long, and for the first time in medical history,
special hospitals for such diseases as trypanosomiasis were being
closed down for lack of patients. One would have thought that
at such a moment there would not have been a single dissentient
voice, but there was — ^more than one, and some of them were
highly influential voices, and their owners sought to prevent
the widespread distribution of this new boon to mankind.

An instance of it came to my own notice. In i^i i I was
invited to Petersburg for a consultation with Rauchfuss, the
famous specialist for children’s sicknesses, who was physician
to the Czarevitch, and in charge of child welfare work in
Russia. The fame of Preparation 606 (the number indicates
how many forms of the preparation Ehrlich had tried out

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

before he arrived at the final one) had, of course, already
penetrated into Russia, but at that time the preparation had
not been released for general use. As I have already indicated,
Ehrlich was an extremely cautious man and he was very anxious
to keep its application under close personal observation and be
quite certain that all the precautions he had laid down for its
use were strictly complied with, so that in the event of any un-
foreseen complications arising he could control all the relevant
factors. It was a long time before he permitted the preparation
to be commercialized. He did not want to see his work dis-
credited by failures, perhaps even by fatal errors, due to wrong
or careless application by doctors not sufficiently trained in its
proper use. However, the clinic in which I worked had as much
of the preparation as we required, and I was therefore in a
position to take a few tubes with me to Petersburg, much to the
surprise and delight of my friend Rauchfuss. I demonstrated
its application to him, and as a scientist he was naturally keenly
interested, but he expressed lively misgiving at the idea of
using the preparation on a wide scale, owing to the attitude of
the Synod of the Orthodox Church, which held that if the
punishment imposed by God on an immoral action could be
evaded the general effect on public morals would be deplorable.

The Prussian police also had their objections, though from a
‘ different angle. They argued that every common prostitute
must sooner or later become infected with syphilis ; for a year
she would do a lot of damage, but after that the danger of her
spreading syphilitic infection was comparatively small, so that
once the acute symptoms had passed the woman was, from their
standpoint, no longer dangerous, seeing that she was incapable
of re-infection; but if the new Preparation 606 cured the
prostitute as thoroughly as was claimed, then she could become
infected again and again and become a permanent danger
instead of a temporary one; it was therefore much better that
syphilitic ^prostitutes should not be cured. It is certainly
difiicult to please everybody.

The development of syphilis research was highly instructive
from many viewpoints. There is a theoretical sequence in
which the various stages in the mastery of a disease should fall.
First the cause of the disease has to be found. When that has
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

been done all the known facts must be collected in order that
a satisfactory diagnosis may be made. And only then can
work proceed systematically to find a cure. This system of
orthodox scientific research was certainly justified in the case of
syphilis. First came Schaudinn, who found the active cause of
the disease in the spirochete. Then Wassermann arrived with
a reliable method of diagnosis by means of his famous reaction.
And finally Ehrlich crowned the whole process with the dis-
covery of salvarsan, the remedy.

A second and most interesting feature of this research into
syphilis was that not one of the epoch-making stages of the
process owed its perfection to any medical school or any pro-
fessional academic teacher. Schaudinn, for instance, was not
even a professor, but a doctor employed by the Imperial Board
of Health with the pompous-sounding title of Government
Councillor, incidentally, a purely formal one. Wassermann was
a titular professor but he had no direct connection with the
University, though he was a member of the Robert Koch
Institute for Infectious Diseases Research. And Paul Ehrlich,
although he was an assistant at the Berlin Charite with the
clinical specialist Karl Gerhardt, never succeeded in securing
an appointment at the University, though he was a member of
an Institute for Experimental Therapy in Frankfort-on-Main.
It seems to me that these facts give a valuable indication as to
the way we ought to organize our medical training and research
work in the future. The medical school should give the ordinary
practitioner his general medical knowledge, whilst the uni-
versity should be reserved for specialized training, and research
should be left in the hands of the research institutes proper.

A few weeks after an article had appeared in the Berlin
Clinical Weekly publicizing the so-called citorictes luis (what
monstrous nomenclature medical scientists think it necessary
to invent !) as the cause of syphilitic infection, a fat little man
came to see me in the Charite. His comfortable belly was
spanned by a thick gold chain, and he wore a paper collar and
a made-up tie complete with dickey, and looked for all the
world like a caricature of a headmaster in a comic paper. Hk
rosy fat cheeks shone where they were not covered with an
untidy growth of brown hair, and his little slit eyes looked

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

sometimes through, sometimes over, a pair of steel-rimmed
glasses. He introduced himself (I hardly caught his name,
which I had never heard before) and asked me if I would be
good enough to arrange an interview for him with my chief.
Professor Kraus. Naturally I was not prepared to do anything
of the sort without knowing exactly why. Kraus was a busy
man and would not have thanked me for wasting his time. My
visitor then told me that he was anxious to demonstrate his
newly discovered syphilitic bacillus. Coming on top of the
ridiculous citorictes luis this was rather too much, and I there-
fore invited him to give me a demonstration of the culprit first.

He was obviously prepared for some such request, and when
I placed my microscope at his disposal he immediately drew a
prepared slide from his pocket, poured Chinese ink over it,
and placed it in the microscope, which he then proceeded to
reinforce with a special lens of unusual magnifying power
(objective ii), which he also drew out of his capacious pocket.
With such simple means he demonstrated the existence of the
spirochsetes beyond reasonable doubt, and all within the space
of a few minutes. The plate was smeared with secretion from a
syphilitic, and thanks to differentiation with the ink he was able
to demonstrate the presence of the spirochaetes. Thousands of
investigators must have examined syphilitic tissue and its
secretions under the microscope, but not one of them got the.
idea of examining the microscopic picture with an unusually
strong magnifying lens such as his objective ii. It was this
extremely simple expedient which led to the discovery of the
cause of syphilis.

The demonstration was so convincing that without more ado I
called in Kraus, who entirely shared my view and persuaded
Schaudinn (that was his name) to give a demonstration before
the Berlin Medical Association and publish his results. The
meetings of the Association took place on Wednesday evenings
and they were usually very well attended ; first of all because it
really was a centre for keeping in touch with the progress of
modem medical science, and secondly because the lectures
gave every doctor an alibi with which he could escape at least
once a week from the chains of domestic felicity — or otherwise.

Wednesday evening was known as ‘‘Medical Night” in all the
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

local dance bars and cabarets — and in one or two still less
reputable establishments. If the programme of the evening was
not very attractive the lecture hall would soon begin to empty
itself as the assembled medical men dispersed in search of
something more amusing. The announcement of yet another
demonstration of the syphilis bacillus aroused no enthusiasm
and little interest. It was definitely not ‘^a gala night’\

Schaudinn was quite unmoved by the occasion, and he
demonstrated his little monsters, the cause of so much human
suffering, as objectively as he had done to us, and without any
learned patter or paraphernalia. The demonstration table was
a large one, and as many microscopes as possible had been set
up, each with its smeared plate of spirochaetes so that everyone
present could see them for himself. The demonstration was
just as convincing, but it must be remembered that there had
been so many disappointments that medical men were highly
sceptical. Only one speaker, a biologist named Kurt Thesing,
rose in the discussion. He dismissed the whole discovery as a
mare’s nest and declared that what could be seen under the
microscope was not a new form of bacteriological life but
merely artificial by-products due to the colouring of the prepara-
tion. As the general feeling of the audience was sceptical they
were only too pleased to accept this explanation of the phen-
omenon, and there was a burst of ironical laughter at the expense
of the lecturer and a rattle of applause for Thesing. Ernst von
Bergman was in the chair, and he was unable to resist the
temptation to exercise a little cheap wit and curry applause
from the audience. 'T herewith close the meeting until the
discovery of the hundred and first cause of syphilis,” he declared.
He got his applause. The audience (those of them who were not
already well on the way to other amusements) pressed forward
to congratulate Thesing and shake his hand demonstratively.

I felt sorry for Schaudinn, and I went over to him to console
him for his lack of success. He seemed quite undisturbed by the
fiasco, and was very calmly and efficiently packing up his
things. He smiled. He really was unmoved; he even seemed
rather sorry for the others.

‘"Even the biggest donkey will have to believe it before long,”
he declared drily.

89

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

He was right, of course, and it was only a matter of weeks
before the offices of the Imperial Board of Health became a
Mecca for bacteriologists and syphilis research workers from all
over the world, and the spirochata pallida received the deserved
additional appellation of Schaudinn. Syphilis research had
entered on a new phase. And Thesing no doubt felt very sorry
for himself.

Popular interest in syphilis research had been aroused only a
short while before this by a tragi-comic happening, whose
victim was the Breslau dermatologist Professor Neisser, the
well-known discoverer of the gdnococcus. He was a wealthy
man, and he decided to organize a scientific expedition to the
Dutch East Indies to carry out mass experiments on apes, as
the cost of such an expedition was likely to be less than the cost
of bringing a sufficient number of apes from the East Indies
to his research institute in Breslau. They were classic experi-
ments in which the infection was carefully studied in every
possible stage, and equally careful studies were made with
regard to organic affinities. When the work of the expedition
was at an end Neisser returned with his staflF to Germany. His
nephew, a well-known brain pathologist of the same name,
arranged for him to deliver a preliminary report on the results
of his labours before the Medical Association in Stettin.

Unfortunately the proposed lecture was seized upon by
all the societies for the protection of animals in Germany (of
which there were many). Their main activists, if I may use
the modern word, were chiefly determined old women of both
sexes. They seem to have taken a tactical leaf out of the
suffragette book, for when the time arrived for the lecture the
hall was packed with them armed with umbrellas and, as it
transpired, rotten eggs. No sooner did Neisser appear on the
platform to deliver his lecture than pandemonium broke loose.
A rain of eggs and other disagreeable missiles descended on the
unfortunate Neisser, and when their ammunition was exhausted
the audience seized on everything not nailed down and made a
concerted move towards the platform, compelling Neisser to
fly for his life. The protest movement swept all over Germany,
and meetings and demonstrations took place everywhere. If

human beings contracted such horrible diseases as a result of
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

their immorality that was their own fault, but for wicked
scientists to go around infecting poor dumb animals, that was
too much. I don’t know what use was ever made of Neisser’s
results, but he never announced them openly and the animal
friends remained triumphant victors on the field.

Before the present building of the German Medical Asso-
ciation was erected (I say “present”, but perhaps it is now so
much rubble) the Association for Internal Medicine used to
meet in the House of the Architects in the Wilhelmstrasse.
It was here that August von Wassermann delivered a lecture in
which he declared that the so-called complementary reaction
put forward by its discoverers, Bordet and Gengou, as a method
for the diagnosis of typhus could also be used for the diagnosis
of tuberculosis. Wassermann was the son of a rich Bamberg
banker, and he carried on his researches as a hobby ; at any rate
it was not necessary for him to earn a living. He was only
theoretically connected with medical science, and his practical
knowledge and experience were both very sketchy. However,
he had a place in the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious
Diseases. He was an undersized hunchback, and like all such
unfortunates in my experience he was very vain and suspicious
by nature. He was always dressed with extreme elegance, and
it was very obvious from his attitude that he was doing his best
to conceal his physical defect. Another compensation, I suppose,
was the fierce moustache, intended perhaps to give him a
martial appearance. He had an intelligent, expressive face,
a fine high forehead and alert eyes, and it was easy to see even
from his appearance that he was a man of unusual capacity.
When it came to his intellect there was no nonsense and no
false show. His thought was untrammelled by prejudices and
he had the courage to express his conclusions openly whatever
they were. He had no false scientific inhibitions; this was
perhaps due to the fact that his scientific pack was not burden-
some, and, in addition, he had to an intense degree something
which in medical research is often more than formal knowledge :
a nose and aflair. He felt intuitively what results were important,
and he would concentrate on them with unremitting energy. He
recognized the discovery of Bordet and Gengou as highly
important not only theoretically (which interested him less),

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

but, above all, practically. He was frank and uncomplicated
enough to be able to recognize the limits of his own scientific
knowledge, and he therefore surrounded himself with know-
ledgable and well-trained scientific ‘ 'coolies’ ^ as they are
dubbed. These are the solid reliable men of no importance on
their own ; the little stars who shine only in the reflected light
of some other and brighter star. In this case it was August
von Wassermann.

He was an accomplished speaker. He never read from a
manuscript and he strolled easily up and down the platform,
his thumbs stuck comfortably into the armholes of his waist-
coat. He spoke slowly and with emphasis and with such con-
fidence that he gave his audience the feeling that they were
listening to a brilliant improvisation, that they were accidentally
present at an inspired hour. Thus the lecture he gave on the
complementary reaction of Bordet and Gengou was rhetoric-
ally speaking a great success, but within a month the discussion
which followed his contention that the complementary reaction
was valuable as a method of diagnosing tuberculosis in its
early stages completely disproved everything he had said.

He had not been lightly handled in the discussion, and a further
lecture in which he proposed to sum up the views of his critics
was awaited with considerable interest. With a broad smile on
his face he walked up and down the platform in his usual
easy-going fashion, and dealt with his critics one by one. He
admitted at once, without any attempt at evasion, that they
were right, and he thanked them for the pains they had taken
to check his statements and to show that the complementary
reaction was not, in fact, suitable as a method of diagnosis for
tuberculosis. In the meantime he had also come to the same
conclusion. ... So far the lecture was very tame and his
audience was undoubtedly disappointed. They had expected
fireworks. But, he declared, stopping in his path and turning
towards his audience with raised finger — the complementary
reaction was of superlative value as a method of diagnosis for
syphilis, and was one hundred per cent, successful even in the
oldest cases.

This was not fireworks, but an explosion. However, his
audience had been once bitten and now his statement was re-
95 !

Science^ Politics and Personalities

ceived with scepticism^ and the end of his lecture rewarded with
applause which was distinctly lukewarm. However, everybody
in the least way connected with syphilis research dashed off
to his laboratory to test the truth or otherwise of Wassermann's
statement. My friend Julius Citron carried out his tests on the
grand scale, and his results left no shadow of doubt : Wasser-
man was right this time, and a pilgrimage set in from all parts
of the world to the Robert Koch Institute. To-day the W/R,
or Wasserman Reaction, is a household word in every clinic in
the world. Wassermann was loaded with all the honours the
heart of a scientist can aspire to, except two which he very
much wanted, but which eluded him to the end and provided
the inevitable drop of bitterness in the cup — he never received
a professorship at a university and the Nobel Prize was not
bestowed on him.

If there is one lesson more than another to be learned from
the life and work of Paul Ehrlich I believe it is that a man, even
the greatest genius, can pursue only one idea to its logical
apotheosis. It often looks, I admit, as though a number of
different new ideas have each offered inspiration, but on closer
examination the apparently disparate ideas are reduced to the
one basic idea. I have held this theory for a long time, and
one day whilst Ehrlich and I were out walking together in
Homberg I asked him what he considered to be the guiding
idea of his scientific life. He told me that when he was about
twenty he had been kept waiting for a while in his uncle’s
laboratory. His uncle was the well-known histologist Weigert.
To while away the time he had looked idly through Weigert’s
microscope which stood ready with a prepared slide coloured
in blue and red. At that time Ehrlich had no histological
knowledge at all and the only thing which struck him was that
some parts of the cells were coloured red and the others blue.
However, he realized at once that certain parts of a cell had an
affinity with the acid red dyestuff whilst other parts of the same
cell had a natural affinity with the basal blue and were there-
fore able to assimilate those colours. Thus various parts of the
same cell could be differentiated by different dyestuffs.

From this simple observation Ehrlich drew far-reaching con-
clusions which he considered and then later summarized in his

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

dissertation on ‘‘Organic Oxygen Requirements’’. The logical
pursuit of this idea of affinity led him first of all to the foundation
of a new branch of science relating to diseases of the blood. The
blood cells were classified according to their colour affinities, and
in special diseases such as anaemias and leucamias there were
characteristic changes. In this way a new pathology arose.

It was the same affinity idea which proved the key to sero-
logical research and immunity, and led finally to chemo-
therapy, whose first link was salvarsan and whose last, but
not necessarily final link is represented to-day by the sul-
phonilamides. Thus the constant pursuit of affinities is the red
thread which goes through all the investigations of Ehrlich,
and it remains the ever-valid guide which he has left to scientific
posterity. Further, it must be borne in mind that this idea is
still in its preliminary stages ; when chemio- therapy has grown
out of its infancy we shall be able to recognize Ehrlich’s great-
ness in its full stature. His first scientific children were promis-
ing enough: there was methyl-blue for neuralgia, arsenic for
syphilis, and disinfecting dyes like tripaflavin. And already
the grandchildren are with us: the sulphonilamides, which have
already proved themselves to be amongst the most powerful
allies of mankind against infectious sicknesses caused by
bacteria such as the pneumococci, streptococci and gonococci.
In 1909 Hoerlein mixed sulphonilamide with azo dyestuff to
give it increased milling and washing durability, but it was not
until 1935 that Domag, working on the basis of Ehrlich’s prin-
ciple of affinity, attempted to use sulphonilamide for medical
purposes.

Paul Ehrlich was a theoretician, and with all his warm
humanity he had no talent as a practitioner. He never de-
veloped a bedside manner and he never succeeded in winning
the real confidence of his patients. He received his medical
training in the Gerhardt Clinic of the Berlin Charity, but he
never went through with it, and finally he abandoned Berlin
and his clinical career altogether, and after working for a while
in a small laboratory in Steglitz, a suburb of Berlin, he retired
to Frankfort-on-Main, where he devoted himself entirely to
research work. When I joined the Charite after Gerhardt’s
death they allotted me Ehrlich’s clinical laboratory for my
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

experiments. It was more of a corridor than a room, about
7' X 33', inadequately lighted by one window. This gloomy
hole was known, on account of its shape, as the intercostal
space, and it was here that Ehrlich made his first basic experi-
ments. When I took over there were hundreds and hundreds of
bottles, with dyestuffs still in them, littered all over the place.
They had to be cleared out and got rid of before there was any
room for me and my labours. In Frankfort, thanks to the
munificence of the chemical industry and in particular Gas-
sella & Co., a firm founded by my wife’s family, Gans, Ehrlich
was installed in the so-called Speierhaus, where unlimited means
were placed at his disposal.

He had a truly childlike nature, and the more famous he
became the more modest he showed himself. He was a loving
husband and father, and, later on, an absolutely doting grand-
father. His greatest pleasures in life were good food, a good
cigar, a never-ending series of thrillers and the telling or listening
to broad stories. He loved his family and was fond of his
friends, but formal social obligations were anathema to him.
He was an understanding superior and a good colleague,
engaging in manner, willingly communicative and without
mistrust. But he had one habit which some colleagues found
disagreeable : if he gave any of his pupils or assistants instructions
he would write them down in a sort of ledger interleaved with
carbon paper. The recipient would have to sign and carry off
the written instructions, and the copy remained in Ehrlich’s
book. I know quite well that this was not done because he
mistrusted those who worked with him; it was due to his ex-
treme regard for system and order.

His thought was primarily visual. He saw a molecule before
him in the room and he would push its elements around like
figures on a chess-board. There was nothing pompous about
him either in appearance or manner. I can see him now,
a fragile little man with a short reddish beard, peering over the
top of his glasses, his eyebrows up in a constant arch and a dead
cigar stump in the corner of his mouth, waggling violently as he
enunciated words of wisdom in a thoroughly casual fashion as
though they were mere pleasant chatter to pass the time. His
was one of those simple but fortunate natures which never

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

become sophisticated and blase. He could get the keenest
pleasures out-ef^^ejry, small things. He was blessed with a really
happy disposition.^

I can remember two occasioijis when his happiness was filled
to overflowing. One was when he received a post-card (of all
means of communication) from some simple soul thanking him
for a wonderful cure with salvarsan. Despite all the scientific
recognition and honours he had already received I think this
was the first time he realized just what his discovery meant to
ordinary people. He never parted from that post-card and he
always carried it around with him in his wallet. The second
time was when the Town Council of Frankfort-on-Main
decided to re-name the street in which his laboratory was
situated ‘Taul Ehrlich Strasse’’. He was certainly not a vain
man, but this honour delighted him hugely and he made no
attempt to conceal the fact. All the printed headings, etc., of
the institute had to be scrapped and a supply ordered with the
new street name.

In the middle of his crowning scientific triumph he received
a blow from which even his happy nature never entirely
recovered. The greatest serologist and immunologist the world
has ever known lost his own adored grandchild, the little son
of his daughter and the mathematician Landauer von Goet-
tingen, from diphtheria.

Until barbarism overflooded the country Ehrlich’s name was
a household word in Germany, and many tens of thousands
had good reason to be grateful to him. When the Nazis came
to power, not only did they burn the Books but they ordered
Ehrlich’s name to be erased. It was never again to be mentioned
in word or print. By that time Ehrlich was dead, having received
every honour possible for a scientist, including the Nobel
Prize. But at least they could persecute his widow, so they con-
fiscated the property he had left and impounded the royalties
from the salvarsan licence, so that his widow was driven out of
the country penniless. In her distress she turned to me, and I
immediately got in,to touch with Professor Sir Almroth E.
Wright, himself a distinguished pupil and friend of Ehrlich,
who in his turn immediately got telephonically into touch with
the Burroughs-Wellcome Institute. Within a few minutes Frau
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

Ehrlich was provided with an income permitting her to live
without want to the end of her days.

But I was advised that the old lady should stay in Switzer-
land and not come to England. When I asked the reason for
this, as it seemed to me, strange condition I was told that the
grant was not big enough to stand the deduction of England’s
heavy income tax, and that it was therefore advisable that she
should stay in^a country where income-tax deductions were very
much less. I laughed. That was England too.

After my habilitation in Berlin I joined the staff of the St.
Franciscus Hospital there, and remained with it to the end of
my Berlin career. The House Chaplain was Monsignor Dr
Frintz, Our first meeting was the beginning of almost thirty
years of uninterrupted friendship. Amongst my closest col-
leagues were the Roumanian, Themistocles Gluck, a brilliant
surgeon, who was the first, together with his successor Soerensen,
who dared to remove the larynx; the gynaecologist Blum-
reich; and the urologist Gasper, the founder of functional
kidney diagnostics. Amongst my many close friends were Nitze,
the inventor of the mirror catheter; the well-known brain
physiologist Munk; the laryngologist Heymann, whom I
assisted in the preparation of his great handbook on laryn-
gology ; and, of course, Zuntz and many of his school, particu-
larly Carl Neuberg, who Is.ter became chief of the Biochemical
Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; Carl Oppenheimer, the
great medical compiler; and the Viennese physiologist Durig.

The exchange of medical ideas and information was very
lively in the various associations, but perhaps it was liveliest
of all at the beer table after every session. It was there, when
we were all at our ease and all good-humoured, that one could
obtain the greatest inspiration. I think we settled more thorny
problems over our beer than we did in formal academic
discussions.

Life in Berlin was running strongly in those days, thanks
chiefly to a tremendous period of prosperity. At the beginning
of the twentieth century rapid progress began upon all fields,
and Berlin soon became a real cosmopolitan centre. From being
a second-class town with more than a trace of provincialism

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

it developed beyond all dispute into a real world centre.
Parallel with and as a result of this development Berlin also
became a world centre of medicine — no, the world centre of
medicine. Medical men came from all parts of the world to
Berlin to refresh their knowledge and acquaint themselves with
the latest developments on the field of medical science. And
not only doctors came, but patients too, and something like a
health (or, if you like, a sickness) industry arose, which brought
in, according to official statistics, approximately seventy
million marks a year. All the leading medical men were
beneficiaries of this phenomenon, and it went on vigorously
until the first world war brought it to a temporary end. But it
was only temporary, and Berlin’s fame as a medical centre
was quickly re-established after the war, and the old industry
was soon as flourishing as ever. Berlin retained its medical
reputation until the arrival of the Nazis, who rapidly destroyed
the fine credit of German science. This time a very heavy,
perhaps a fatal blow has been struck. Its sinister results affect
not only the present but the future, because since 1932 there
has been an alarming decline in both teaching and research.

The numerically largest contingent of our patients came
from Russia, The Russians have always been prepared to make
great sacrifices and take tremendous pains in order to keep
their health and strength. They are by nature true lovers of
life, and they worship both Venus and Bacchus, but without
health and strength neither can be worshipped as seems fit to
their devotees. Apart perhaps from Jews and Hindus, the
Russians set more value on their health and physical well-
being than any other race. Religious promises of happiness
hereafter seem to hold little attraction for any of these three
races. They are all profoundly realistic. They prefer to enjoy
their lives in this wicked world just as long and as intensely as
ever they can, and I for one don’t blame them.

One example of the lengths to which they are prepared to
go occurs to me from my own experience. A highly placed and
very wealthy Russian arrived in Berlin for a consultation con-
cerning his health. Such people don’t do things by halves, and
on the very first evening he invited me out to dinner. Un-
fortunately a young and obviously inexperienced wine waiter
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

handled the expensive Bordeaux so clumsily that he shook up
the sediment. My Russian host was furious, but I succeeded in
calming him by pointing out that the content of organically
compounded iron in the sediment would undoubtedly be good
for his anaemia. When I called to visit him a few days later I
found a powerful battery of empty bordeaux botdes stacked
up in the ante-chamber of his suite, and in reply to my astonished
question as to what he had done with all that wine he declared
that there was no cause for alarm, he had only drunk just the
sediment of each bottle for his anaemia.

I was very anxious not to lose contact with either research
work or teaching. I knew how easy it was for a medical
practitioner to let himself be swallowed up entirely by his
practice, and I therefore arranged my day so that the morning
up to two o’clock was taken up with the hospital and the clinic,
and a few hours in the afternoon by my practice. The evening
hours were then devoted to work requiring peace and quiet,
such as the writing of monographs, the checking of experiments,
and general literary studie^. That sounds a tremendously busy
life, and the reader might get the impression that I spent my
time dashing from one thing to the other in a round of haste
and bustle, but such was by no means the case. On the con-
trary, I found plenty of time in which to devote myself to non-
professional interests and, in general, to enjoy life. In my
experience those people who never do anything but work, and
never have any time for anything else, are the people who
achieve least. I like a man who finds time for everything, and
never rushes around with his tongue hanging out, complaining
that he’s overburdened with work — they’re the really capable
ones. They plan their time rationally, and in consequence their
lives are a harmonious whole. I have never known a genius
who was one of the other sort, but I have known quite a lot
of inferior characters who were. The really great men I have
known always had time ; probably because they never wasted it.
The ever-hurrying ones never had proper time for anything.
They lived their lives according to a scrappy schedule, perhaps,
but never according to a well-founded programme.

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

CHAPTER VH

WORLD WAR NUMBER ONE

Imperial Germany had long been preparing for war, and
when it finally came she was not taken by surprise. Perhaps out
of a feeling of delicacy her statesmen had done a little cooking
of the national accounts so that the real sums spent on arma-
ments did not appear in the Budgets. However, the general
military levy which was raised in 1913 could not be concealed.
Each propertied citizen had to sacrifice one thousandth part of
his fortune to the appetite of Moloch, though it was not done
without indignant protest. Like most other nationalists, he
preferred his glory on the cheap. In the spring of 1914 it
became evident that certain modernization measures had been
carried out in the German Army and the first companies in
field grey began to appear on the streets, a circumstance which
gave rise to a deal of excited comment. Yes, they were prepared
as well as they were able, but their ideas were not always of the
brightest, as the following experience will show.

In 1914, before the war, I was consulted by Mauser, who was
already famous as an inventor and upon whom all sorts of
honorary titles and decorations had been bestowed. He was a
truly modest and God-fearing man. I have often known
staunch Catholics of this type. Not only did he never miss Mass
on Sunday, but he attended every day. He was born in Obern-
dorf in Wurtemberg and he still lived there in a large villa — a
little castle, in fact — outside the town in which his arms works
was situated. There he led a life of hard work, social isolation
and religious devotion. There is something paradoxical about
so many inventors of murderous weapons. Schwarz, the man
who invented gunpowder, was a monk. Krupp was a real
sentimentalist. The Swede Nobel used the money he gained by
making dynamite for all sorts of benevolent causes, including
the furtherance of world peace. It has also been reliably re-
ported concerning the famous Italian bandit Rinaldo Rinaldini
that before setting out on his innumerable forays, when he did
not stop at murder, he invariably prayed fervently to the
Blessed Virgin for the success of the undertaking.

Mauser had a divided full beard which came to two points
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

like the more famous one of Admiral von Tirpitz, but unlike
von Tirpitz he was a smallish man. He had lost one eye in an
explosion, and it was now replaced by a glass one. He was in
love with his work and his inventions. One day he brought me
a triple-barrelled gun, one barrel for bullets and the other two
for shot, and a revolver. They were the latest products of his
inventive genius. He had come to make me a present of them
before submitting them to the Reich’s Firearms Commission.

In May of the same year he came to me again, this time with
a leather case lined with emerald-green plush and containing
hundreds of metal bits and pieces whose purpose was a mystery
to me. In bitter disappointment he told me the sad story. This
was his new quick-fire repeating rifle. A Parliamentary com-
mission reinforced by the highest military experts had just
tested it at the Military Range at Halensee and pronounced it
in glov/ing terms to be the very last word in infantry armaments,
only to reject it on the ground that its introduction would
tempt infantrymen to waste ammunition. Whilst he was telling
me this he took the magazine out of the case. This was ap-
parently the-soul of the thing, and it represented a marvellous
piece of engineering workmanship. He stroked it as though it
were a child, and the tears rolled down his cheeks into his
beard — ^from the glass eye too.

Three months later the first world war broke out, and, as
everyone knows, the machine-gun became queen of the battle.
Bureaucratic ‘^experts” have so often been wrong; it is as well
to take their advice with considerable reserve — and a pinch of
common sense if available, for stupidity is an ever-present
attribute of men, and experts are not immune.

The shots in Serajevo laid more than the Habsburg Heir-
Apparent low. One Sunday evening when I came out of the
Friedrichstrasse Station on my return from a trip to the Spree-
wald I found the pavements littered with copies of an extra
edition announcing the assassinations. And what a wave of
righteous indignation there was! Not only against the mur-
derers, but against the whole Serbian people, and the general
feeling was enthusiastically in favour of war against these
‘‘Balkan bandits and murderers”. The propaganda machine
had done its work well. Warning voices were raised urging

XOl

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

moderation, but the militarists and war-mongers redoubled
their efforts and shrieked in tones of the greatest moral indigna-
tion for the punishment of the criminals.

Four weeks later war broke out. At the time I was suffering
from — of all things! — whooping cough, and when an attack
seized me I had practically to hang on to the nearest lamp-post
until the paroxysm had passed. Wildly excited mobs paraded
up and down Unter den Linden cheering and howling. I saw
the Kaiser make his historic appearance on the balcony of the
Palace, and heard him declare that from that moment on he
knew no parties, only Germans. And in answer to him the
enormous crowds in the Palace Square roared their enthusiastic
approval without distinction of class or party.

But there were still people who were better advised, and even
when the war had begun and the first victory messages began
to come in to fan the lunatic flame still higher, they were not
deceived and clearly foretold the tragic end of the adventure,
.lamenting the prevailing megalomania bitterly. Amongst them
were Ottmar Strauss, the iron and coal magnate ; the bankers
Leopold Koppel and Carl Fuerstenberg; and the head of the
Hamburg-America Line, Albert Ballin. Such people were
profoundly depressed at the fatal actions of the weak Bethmann-
Hollweg Government, egged on by sinister influences in the
background.

Naturally, the war upset everything. Individual considera-
tions were brushed to one side. The declaration of war had
whipped up the lowest and most murderous instincts of
humanity. Germany, of course, was innocent of all blame.
“We are surrounded by a world of enemies.” “We have taken
up arms in self-defence.” And few, so very few, bothered to
inquire whether the wild slogans were true or not. Irrational
instincts won the day, not reason, and the human cattle
careered enthusiastically into the slaughter-house.

As a Hungarian I was liable for duty with the Austro-Hun-
garian Army, but the German military authorities asked for
my seconding to them and it was granted, so that I spent the
whole of the war in German military service. At first I was
attached to the Town Kommandatur in an advisory capacity
and I stayed in Berlin, chiefly to treat superior officers returning
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

from the front. I was not satisfied with that, however, and I
asked to be allowed to go to the front. An opportunity quickly
arose thanks to the good offices of my friend Erik Woellwarth,
who was at that time Chief of Staff to the Army of von Falken-
hayn. I went out with him, and soon experienced war not only
from the medical but also from the military operational view-
point. It was a new world for me, full of deeply impressive
experiences, and despite its horrors I would not willingly have
missed it.

Let it not be thought that this is any claim to the possession
of a heroic nature. Far from it ; by preference I am a bookworm
and not given to any sort of brawling. The only courage I ever
consciously exercised was just as much as it took to fight the
ordinary battles of life with dignity. Demonstrative heroism
I gladly left to those less intellectual souls who, apparently
conscious of inferiority, seem to need some such proof of their
right to exist. Nevertheless I did win the Iron Gross for
‘‘Gallantry in Face of the Enemy”. And they were not brought
up with the rations, as some people in this country seem to think.

My act of “heroism” consisted in keeping my head when
others were inclined to panic, and bringing a whole Field
Hospital to safety along a little-used track through the marshes
when we were outflanked on both sides by advancing Russian
columns, and without losing a single patient. To me it was a
job of work which fell to my lot. It was my responsibility,
and I certainly didn’t want to set a bad example. If that
is what they call heroism, all right.

I got other medals, naturally — all those that came as a
matter of course to my rank and position. They proved useful
subsequently in the nursery. When one or the other of my
children behaved rather too “heroically” I pinned on a medal.
It calmed down the dismayed youngster wonderfully. We
didn’t much care for heroism in our household.

During my military career I was attached to various armies
in the field, and in this way I went through the Brussilow
offensive, the advance through Serbia, the reduction of
Roumania, and the Battle of the Aisne. All in all, my mili-
taristic requirements were thoroughly catered for. In short, I
had a bellyfull.

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

Opinions about war are divided. I imagine that I am in an
unpopular minority at the moment : I doubt whether the world
will ever loiow permanent peace. Apart from all questions of
politics there are deep biological reasons for war. I think it
must be quite clear to my readers already that I am far from
being a bloodthirsty man. On the contrary, I am inclined to
be sentimental: individual tragedies can move me to tears.
And I have certainly seen the sufferings involved in war at
first hand. But I am also a scientist, and I believe in the
validity of biological and mass psychological lav/s more than I
do in the utopian and theoretical constructions of the apostles
of pacifism. War is an adequate reaction to given conditions.
As long as there are oppressors and oppressed, haves and have-
nots, privileged and under-privileged, the potential clashes
latent in these antagonisms will seek to resolve themselves —
and the resolution is likely to be violent.

And there is another angle, even to war : the results of war
are not wholly bad. War is also an impulse to progress. It is
a kind of mass review and revision of all the mechanical and
industrial products of mankind. War also brings about a more
uniform and juster distribution of the world’s wealth. The mass
movements which take place in war, and the enrolment of
women in war service, work radically against any threatening
degeneration by inbreeding. The social and biological effects
of war are very favourable.

As long as human nature remains what it is (and that will
be a very long time) nations will not surrender what they hold
at the behest of any peace conferences, but will fight to
retain it to the last moment, and will give way, if they give way,
only to still greater strength than their own. Do the post-war
happenings in the world suggest- that I am so very wrong in
my belief?

The conceptions ^‘static” and ^‘dynamic” will operate
alternately in human relations as they do in biophysics. Our
problem is not to create eternal peace, but to ensure as long a
pause as possible for reconstruction. The axiom Polemos pater
panton is still true to day, and the arms of Oxford still bear the
inscription Fortis est Justitia,

As I have pointed out, the enthusiasm at the beginning of the

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Science, Politics and Personalities

war was tremendous, but after the Battle of the Marne it
declined, despite what I can only describe as a negative master-
piece of propaganda on the part of the German Supreme
Command, which succeeded in concealing this decisive defeat
not only from the general public but even from the army itself.
It was 1917 before the common people of Germany began to
have any real idea of what had happened in 1914. Lies,
propaganda and the concealment of the truth were the chief
weapons of the nationalistic elements. Both Socialists and
Catholics opposed them, at first covertly and then more and
more openly. By 1917 the hopelessness of Germany’s military
situation was already known to many people and it was frankly
discussed in parliamentary commission. By that time there was
a very definite political opposition to the further prosecution
of the war, and its most courageous figure was my very good
friend Matthias Erzberger.

Erzberger was the son of a village postman in Wurtemberg,
and he had been an elementary school teacher. His general
outlook was Catholic and proletarian. He had an unusually
sound intuitive feeling for politics, and in his unspoiled peasant
dialect he could express good, sound common-sense truths in
a way which made them understandable to everybody. And
because he was himself convinced, he convinced others too.
He was a relentless worker, and from thought to action was one
quick step for him. He was short-sighted, fair-haired and clean-
shaven, and his rather chubby face of an unhealthy bluish-red
tinge looked as though it were constantly on the verge of a
little grin. A plump body would have fitted that chubby face
better, but in fact he was distinctly thin and frail with bony
legs. He was a member of parliament at the age of twenty-
five and it was not long before he had become the undisputed
leader of the left wing of his party, the Catholic Centre.

The Centre Party was even more heterogeneous in composi-
tion than other political parties. It was like a little parliament
on its own in which all social tendencies were represented from
the extreme Right to the Libertarian Left. These disparate
elements were held together by one common aim: to further
the interests of political and religious Catholicism and, if
possible, to secure it hegemony in the Reich. The chief voting

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strength of the party lay in Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemberg, the
Rhineland, Westphalia, Hannover and parts of Silesia. Like
the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the social structure of
the Centre Party was democratic: the meek, or not so meek,
and lowly greatly outnumbered the feudal aristocrats. The
party policy was laid down by the clergy. During the twenty-
five years which preceded Hitler’s coming to power the most
influential man behind the Centre Party was the Jesuit Father
Rauterkus, a clever and cautious politician. Most of the
important political decisions of the Centre Party were taken in
a stuffy and rather gloomy little room in the Catholic Pres-
bytery in the Koeniggraetzerstrasse, where the thin and ascetic
Jesuit Father Rauterkus lived. No Centre Party proposal was
ever laid before the House until it had been worked out and
approved in the Koeniggraetzerstrasse. The remarkable old
man held all the political wires in his hand, and at every
important point he had one of his confidential followers who
did his bidding absolutely. No one but those in the inner circle
of politics knew anything about Father Rauterkus, or of the
decisive influence he wielded. I cannot remember a single
instance in all those twenty-five years of his having come
forward in any way, or of his name ever appearing in print.

The Roman counterpart to Father Rauterkus was Father
Carlo Bricarelli. He also remained well in the background and
from the Civilta Cattolica in Rome he exercised great influence
on the world policy of the Catholic Church.

The German Catholic clergy were patriotic, but they were
not nationalistic ; they were thoroughly German, but they were
not amiably disposed towards Prussianism. In this respect they
were unlike the Protestant clergy, whose Prussian military
discipline was softened only by a certain spiritual humanity.
The Evangelical Church in Germany based itself on the State;
the Catholic Church based itself on the Vatican and its world
policy.

The right half of the Centre Party took on a deeper and
deeper nationalist tone until on the extreme Right it almost
touched the Nazis ; the left half became more and more left
until on its extreme edge it was almost Communistic. In the

German parliament the transition from extreme Right to
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

extreme Left was very gradual. The neighbouring groupings
in the scale were not sharply differentiated, and the dominating
factor of the whole was that they were all, from the extreme
Right to the extreme Left, more or less, consciously or un-
consciously, nationalist; the Deutschland ueber Alles arrogance
affected them all to a greater or lesser degree.

The enfant terrible of the House was Matthias Erzberger. He
was the main mouthpiece of the Centre Party. Both Ludendorfi
and von Tirpitz hated him, and they did their utmost to get rid
of him. He had an irritating habit of embarrassing them with
the simplest and most innocent-sounding questions. When on
one occasion von Tirpitz, boasting of the effects of his blockade,
declared that the whole Australian harvest could not be shipped
on his account and was being eaten by mice, Erzberger rose
to a question and without calling von Tirpitz a liar he asked
how many mice his Right Honourable friend thought would
be sufficient to do the job thoroughly. And on another occasion,
when LudendorfF demanded that all brass door-knockers and
handles should be collected for scrap to assist the war effort,
Erzberger asked drily: ‘^And what comes after the door-
knobs?”

Erzberger has been called a defeatist. He was not a defeatist
at all ; he was merely one of the first to recognize that Germany
could not win the war, and it was this recognition that made him
work for peace as early as 1917. Erzberger was a patriot, but
Catholicism meant more to him than the German Reich, and
his aim was to found a Catholic Reich, with its Centre in Rome,
if possible, but at least in Vienna. He was prepared to make
far-reaching concessions in order to achieve his aim, and he
established relations with all sorts of people, many of them
unfortunately of very little real influence. Sometimes he set his
hopes on France, sometimes on Italy, but in my opinion he
harvested chiefly indiscretions and these activities did rather
more harm than good to the cause of peace.

Erzberger’s idea was the formation of an alliance of all
Catholic peoples from the eastern borders of Hungary to the
Atlantic coasts of France and Spain. Up to a point the French
had some such idea themselves, but with this difference, that
France had not the slightest intention of restoring the power of

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

the Catholic Church. Erzberger’s ideas were not popular in
Germany, even amongst Catholics, but for want of a better
policy they were supported by the men behind the Centre
Party, including the big Catholic industrialists headed by old
August Thyssen. Erzberger’s influence increased as the power
of his political and military opponents declined as a result of
the unfavourable progress of the war. By the end of the war
it was so great that he was appointed leader of the German
Armistice Commission, and during the last year of the war ^‘the
Erzberger Office” was an influential centre into which almost
all important official and unofficial channels of information ran.

During this period I was at the front almost constantly, but
occasionally Erzberger recalled me for medical consultations.
At a time when I happened to be in Brussels to organize special
training courses for doctors behind the lines I received urgent
instructions to return to Berlin at once. When I arrived
Erzberger told me that the Gallipoli front was in danger of
collapse owing to a shortage of ammunition. He had made
arrangements to send large quantities of munitions by rail via
Roumania and Bulgaria, and to this end he had bribed a
certain Roumanian Minister, who had then given instructions
for the consignments to pass through Roumania. However,
his brother, who was also a Minister, wanted to be bribed too,
and he was holding up the frontier crossing into Bulgaria. It
had been suggested that the frontier guards should be put out
of the way with poison. What did I think of it?

I didn’t think much of it, and I refused to have anything to
do with it. In any case, a few blonde ladies and a battery of
champagne bottles proved every bit as effective. The guards
awoke with a headache and perhaps a bad conscience, and the
consignment was through. My medical conscience had won a
clear-cut victory over my patriotism. Not that it helped much
in any case : the end was no longer in doubt. The front in the
West was on the point of collapse. The morale of the people
was extremely depressed. Germany needed an armistice
urgently. The discussion as to how the affair should be con-
ducted lasted only a few days. Erzberger had already chosen
the members of the Commission which was to go under his
leadership to a spot appointed by the Entente Powers. The
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

members were all friends of his, including Count Bernsdorf, the
diplomat, and General von Winterfeld, who was well known
to the French, and enjoyed some sympathy in France. He had
been severely injured at the last peace-time manoeuvres in
France, at which he was present as German military attache,
and the French had shown him the greatest kindness and
consideration.

Before Erzberger left Berlin with his Commission to meet
the Entente he lunched at my house. As good luck would have
it a grateful patient had presented us with some very good
provisions, and we did our best not to send Erzberger off on
his unenviable mission hungry. There was plenty to eat and
plenty to drink, particularly as my wife had lost her appetite
as a result of the general depression which weighed on Germany
during those critical days. But neither Erzberger’s good spirits
nor his appetite seemed to have suffered and he ate and drank
with great relish. In fact he had no time to talk, although my
wife bombarded him with the anxious questions of a despairing
patriot. Erzberger listened to it all — or perhaps he didn’t,
for he made no reply, and it was only when we had arrived at
the coffee and the brandy that he turned to her and spoke the
historic words of comfort, enunciated in a broad Swabian
accent :

‘‘Don’t cry, my dear Melanie. It’s not going to be as bad as
all that. Sixty million corpses would stink too much.”

And then he left in his car, which was already waiting at the
door below, and went off to meet the French officers. They
took him and his companions and led them blindfolded to
somewhere in a wood. Where it was they did not know, and
as one tree looks very much like another, there was little to help
them in their efforts to establish their whereabouts. The
authorization of the Commission had been signed by Prince
Max von Baden, who was Germany’s Chancellor when
Erzberger set out, but during the day Ebert had been appointed
Reich’s President, and a telegram en clair was immediately
sent off to Erzberger : “Accept Armistice under any conditions
Reich’s President Schluss”. Marshal Foch waved the telegram
under Erzberger’s nose in great anger and excitement. “Reich’s
President Schluss,” he snorted. “Who is this Reich’s President

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Jams, The Story of a Doctor

Schluss? IVe never heard of him.’’ He seemed to think the
Germans were up to some new trick, and wanted to show right
away with determination that it wouldn’t go down. It proved
impossible to convince him that ‘‘ Schluss” was the German
wo-rd for ‘‘Stop”, and negotiations hung fire until the arrival
of a more detailed telegram formally confirming Erzberger as
leader of the Commission and Germany’s plenipotentiary.

The German delegates were still ignorant of their where-
abouts, and the soldiers who had been told off to guard them
had obviously been sworn to silence. And then Erzberger had
a brilliant idea, typical of his peasant slyness. It was Sunday,
so he casually aslted the orderly who served breakfast where
the nearest church was, as he would like to attend Mass.
Without thinking, the orderly mentioned the nearest village.
After that it was easy for von Winterfeld to look up his General
Staff map and find out where they were. It was the historic
forest of Compiegne.

Three years later Erzberger was again in the news. For the
last time. The nationalistic war-mongers who had plunged
Europe into disaster wanted a scapegoat for their failure to
win the war. It was their usual noble custom. They chose
Erzberger, and on August 26th, 1921, he was murdered whilst
out walking in the Black Forest.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FAILURE OF THE REPUBLIC

After THE Armistice sad and hard times came for everyone,
high and low in Germany. Many suffered severe privations.
There were disturbances, and the whole atmosphere was one of
insecurity. Germany was experiencing revolution.

On November gth I arrived in Frankfort-on-Main from
Koenigstein on official business. Armed representatives of the
Workers and Soldiers Council deprived me of my sword. It
was done with great politeness and many apologies. They also
asked for my name and address in order that the sword could
be returned to me “after the revolution”. It was, too. About
four months later it reached me very neatly packed from some-

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

where in Brunswick. When I arrived at the military hospital
I was informed by a private, who stood to attention with an old-
time click of the heels when he addressed me, that he had been
instructed by the Workers and Soldiers Council to take charge,
but that for the rest I was to carry on without let or hindrance.
And that was more or less typical.

There were, it is true, small bands of marodeurs who did
their best to fish in troubled waters, but on the whole there was
very little of the wild tumult usually associated with the idea
of revolution. There were processions and mass demonstrations
of cheering, shouting, shrieking men and women, but they were
all very orderly. They advanced in serried ranks, carrying red
flags, and marshals with arm-bands marched at their sides —
and they usually took care not to tread on the grass. I am not
generalizing from one experience. My duties took me all over
Germany at the time, and everywhere I saw the same picture.
It might be a revolution, but it was a very peaceable one.

One day I was standing with Fritz von Gans, one of my wife’s
uncles, on the balcony of his house looking at one such spectacle.
He was over eighty by that time and he had been, together
with his two brothers Adolf and Leo, one of the leading pioneers
of Germany’s chemical industry. We were a little anxious
about him in those uncertain days, but he was not in the least
worried about himself.

‘‘You know,” he said, “I went through the 1848 revolution.
I don’t like these peaceful revolutions at all. We shall have to
pay for it one day.”

Well, the disappointed veteran of 1848 was right. And even
that hadn’t been much of a revolution anyway.

I remember another typical instance. Whilst Karl Lieb-
knecht and Rosa Luxemburg led vast columns of revolu-
tionary demonstrators into the Tiergarten past the horribly
ornate Pillar of Winged Victory there was an industrious em-
ployee of the Berlin Town Council busily cleaning the mosaic
picture representing the victorious entry of Kaiser Friedrich
into Berlin after the Franco-Prussian War.

I also witnessed another picture : the march past of the army
Hindenburg had brought back over the Rhine. I stood on the
great staging at Brandenburg Gate and watched them pass

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

through along Unter den Linden. That didn’t look like a
defeated army. Their uniforms were cleaned and pressed, and
they marched as smartly as ever, doing what is known in this
country as the goose-step, with great vim. But a few hundred
yards further along, at the famous Kranzler Corner of the
Friedrichstrasse, they broke ranks and turned into a chaotic
mob. Not long after that some of them were firing at pedestrians
from the windows and roofs of the newspaper quarter. People
in the mass are always irrational and not to be trusted. Their
temper veers like a weathercock in a gust of wind.

However, the police soon had the matter in hand. The
officers had all disappeared. Not one of them was to be seen,
and not one of them made any attempt to save the honour of
the flag under which they had taken the oath. In fact the only
people who hurried to ground were the scared officers, and the
chief of them all, General Ludendorff, donned a pair of blue
glasses as a disguise and dashed off helter-skelter to Sweden,
leaving the beloved Fatherland to get along as well as it could.
They can prance and bluster when they win, but they don’t
make good or dignified losers.

Only later did a number of armed bands get together —
individuals of the Schlageter type, drunken, reckless students,
bankrupt existences, dubious characters who donned a pseudo-
patriotic cloak to go about their banditry better and give it a
quasi-legal air. The nationalistic officers who had fled into
hiding before they were hurt contented themselves with under-
ground intrigues until the time arrived when they could appear
on the surface again and flaunt an even more arrogant
nationalism.

It must not be thought that the German Army was entirely
disbanded. Far from it; with the active assistance of the new
Socialist Ministers the wool was pulled over the eyes of the
Inter-Allied Control Commission, and the most reliable and
best-organized units were kept in being. For a while, but only
for a short while, the General Staff disappeared. The mili-
tarists were scattered over the country, but they came together
in conventicles. One of their chief aiders and abettors was the
Social-Democratic War Minister Noske, and I can remember
more than one sharp clash between him and Erzberger. The
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

man was a boon and a blessing to the militarists. Many
measures a professional soldier would never have dared to
propose were carried out by this man, and in general it is true
to say that the defeated Generals received far more support
from the Socialist Ministers than they could ever have obtained
from a frankly nationalist government at that period. The
Socialist leaders rendered shameful service to German mili-
tarism, but they paid for it in the end. When the time came
they received contemptuous dismissal instead of thanks.
German Socialism had nourished a viper in its bosom.

The inherited weakness of German Democracy in general
was a slavish devotion to hard and fast principles which made
it quite impossible ever to summon up sufficient energy to
seize opportunity even when it afforded. Cowardly indecision
was perhaps the greatest weakness of Germany’s Socialists.
Their orthodox worship of arid principles, their doctrinaire
outlook, their refusal to act at critical moments, and their
concentration on a supposedly impressive publicity and litera-
ture made Hitler’s triumph possible. Faced with the necessity
of pursuing practical democratic politics, the German Republic
failed to encourage the vigorous development of democratic
ideas, and it degenerated into a distorted image of what a
democratic republic might and should have been.

No attempt was made to strengthen the democratic re-
publican idea, and day after day it lost a little more of that
small fund of popularity it at one time possessed amongst the
German people, until finally nothing was left. Thanks to its
own cowardly inactivity, the democratic republic and its flag
became objects of contempt for the middle classes. Snobbery
did the rest. To be a Republican was to be an inferior sort of
person. All '"the best people” were anti-Republicans, and it
became a mark of good class to dissociate oneself from '^the
proletarian gang”. Politically the German middle class was
rotten. Primarily from snobbery it rejected the Republic, but
that was its sole political platform; it had no constructive
proposals and nothing to put in the Republic’s place. The
Weimar Republic was attacked from above, abused with
impunity, and dismissed with enormous contempt. And there
was no effective defence from below.

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

Lack of political character was the hallmark of the day, and
in the meantime a new army was being organized in the back-
ground. Its task was to defend the German Reich, but by no
means the German Republic. The first weakly democratic
innovations in the Reichswehr disappeared and the spirit of
the Potsdam Guards returned in all its old feudal arrogance.
The new officers corps had their own old honour, old position
and good old special privileges.

It must not be thought that this development took place in
defiance of the Government. By no means. On the contrary,
it had their support, to the deep dishonour of Germany’s
Socialists. They had never rid themselves of the old cadaver
discipline bred in the bone from childhood, and the sight of a
smart uniform still gave them the same old thrill. When things
began to get too bad, feeble criticisms were offered in parlia-
ment, but the mouths of those few men who were in earnest
opposition were soon stopped. Germany secretly nourished the
spirit of revenge. Her public life was double-faced. Her
character was deceitful. It was this lack of civic courage which
finally rotted away the very basis of the democratic republic
until it collapsed in itself.

And in this general baseness the biggest fraud and black-
guard in world history, though for a time he undoubtedly
believed in his own idiocies, could find acceptance as a liberator.
In a world of characterless careerists and politically dishonest
figures a man with a conviction, no matter how unworthy it
was, had at least that advantage. A ‘^Leader’’ had arisen. It
is true that he babbled utter nonsense, but at least he had a
positive programme, no matter how fundamentally evil and
fundamentally foolish it might be. Revenge! shrieked the paper-
hanger turned political quack, and masses of Germans flung
themselves at his feet.

This literal maniac was not a deliberate liar in the ordinary
sense. He pronounced a false doctrine, but he believed in it
himself. That is the pseudology of a lunatic, but not of a liar.
I find it difficult to use the word ‘‘honest” in connection with
one of the greatest criminals in world history, but fundamentally
Hitler was honest. He was honest in the sense of one of Carl
Fuerstenberg’s famous witticisms. On hearing of the sudden

Science^ Politics and Personalities

death of a colleague with a thoroughly well-earned evil reputa-
tion, the well-known Berlin banker declared: ‘'What a pity!
He was the only honest man on the whole Exchange. He looked
like a scoundrel and he was a scoundrel.” The latrine states-
man, philosopher and politician Hitler wrote down beforehand
in his infamous book everything he intended to do, and then
by easy stages he did it all. The senseless and turgid rubbish
he wrote was in defiance of all human understanding and of all
decent human feeling, but for him it was true.

Medically speaking Hitler was a case of maniac depressive
lunacy, and not even an interesting one. Psychologically
speaking, the German people represented a much more interest-
ing case for accepting his lunatic ideas and enthusiastically
putting them into horrible practice. I am not prepared to
rehabilitate the poor loony Hitler by making him responsible
for his actions, but at least that 34 per cent, of the German
people who voted for him must bear the responsibility before
the world. As a doctor I have often listened to the babble of
lunatics — ^irresponsible in the true sense of the word. But if the
warders had adopted the criminal nonsense and put it into
practice I should have called in the Public Prosecutor.

Although even in September 1918 the abdication of the
Kaiser was already being freely discussed in confidential
reports to the big industrialists, the more sober military leaders
and responsible Government officials, the Social Democratic
Party was quite unprepared to take over power when the
abdication actually took place, and totally unable or unwilling
to use its victory. The negotiations which finally led to the
abdication took months, for Wilhelm was most unwilling to go,
and he retreated only under compulsion from one line of defence
to the next until finally a promise that the Hohenzollern fortune
should not be touched persuaded him to take the historic step.
When Ebert took over as the first Reich’s President he and his
Government were in a state of utmost confusion and em-
barrassment.

Ebert had been a saddler and later on the proprietor of a
small restaurant. He had the solidity and real dignity of an
honest craftsman and father of a family who puts on his best
suit and goes to church on Sundays — unless he happens to be

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

what is called a free-thinker. Nestroy has observed that when
God gives a man office he gives understanding to go with it, and
therefore Government officials are not appointed by God,
Ebert obviously received his understanding through his office.
As might be imagined, he was no revolutionary; far from it,
and he is credibly reported to have declared that he hated the
idea of revolution like the plague. He was a simple man who
lived modestly, and it is to his credit that even in high office
he never sought or pretended to be anything else. He was
perhaps the only one of them all who occupied a prominent
position with a certain dignity and without getting a swelled
head. His wife, too, possessed real dignity in her simple way,
and she too kept her head in her new position and never
attempted to push herself into the foreground. One incident
which has always remained in my mind will illustrate better
than any words of mine' just what I mean. I was present at a
social function at which the stiff-necked arrogant Potsdam
clique was also represented. The conversation turned to the
beauties of Taormina, Frau Ebert spoke of the famous Sicilian
beauty spot with real love and enthusiasm. One of the ladies
from Potsdam, obviously with malicious intent, let it be seen
from her remarks that she found it a little strange that anyone
in Frau Ebert’s former humble position should have been able
to undertake the long and expensive journey to this playground
of the rich. The First Lady of the Reich looked at the woman
coolly and replied with matter-of-fact dignity and without
embarrassment : ‘T was in service then”.

I admired Frau Ebert. She knew her position. It was a
difficult one. She filled it admirably and she never failed in
simple tact. It was. this same sterling character which helped
her to bear with equal calmness and dignity the persecutions
and humiliations to which she was subjected later by the
jcrowing Nazi louts. She lived in a small flat and cherished her
^memories, and I believe she was happier there than in the
Reich’s President’s Palace in the Wilhelmstrasse. She never got
over the death of her husband, particularly as she had the
feeling that his last illness need not have proved fatal. August
Bier, who performed the operation for appendicitis on her
husband, was much taken up with homoeopathy at the time,

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

and he treated the post-operative bowel paralysis with in-
effective measures and fatal results for the first Reich’s
President of the German Republic.

Unfortunately very few of the new figureheads resembled the
Eberts. Most of them had not sufficient character to stand the
sudden transition to power, or, at least, office. Modesty is a
rare virtue, but for me at least it is a criterion of real worth.
When inferior characters suddenly come to power and influence
they invariably lose their heads. If they meet with no opposition
they become impertinent and abuse their power. If they meet
with determined opposition they become craven and crumple
up. The aristocrat seems to be given a certain dignity in the
cradle, and tact seldom fails him. In important matters I
would always sooner negotiate with an aristocratic type than
with many an over-clever proletarian or cunning lawyer of low
breeding. The aristocratic, monocled, gaunt von Seeckt could
do what he liked with his superior, the swollen-headed and yet
almost servile War Minister, the jumped-up proletarian Noske,
He could use the former sergeant-major for doing things which,
as a clever diplomat, he would never have dreamed of doing
himself.

The notorious ^Governess” of the Wilhelmstrasse was the
cunning Secretary of State Meissner, His political creed was
self-advancement, and he sacrificed any convictions he may
originally have possessed to it. He served the Socialist Ebert,
and after that he served the monarchist Hindenburg, and, he
ended up by serving the Nazi Hitler with the same willingness.
Originally he had been a minor railway official, but when the
revolution came he was flushed to the surface, and there he
stayed bobbing along in all kinds of political weather. His
petty bureaucratic soul loved a luxurious life with plenty of
caviar and champagne. His wife was a pushing, ambitious and
titivated blonde. Most of his friends were rich and powerful
Jews. One hand washes the other; they were useful to him,
and he was useful to them.

There was no doubt about his political dexterity. During his
long career he arranged the formation of twenty-eight new
Cabinets, and in every political constellation he saw to it that
there was comfortable room for him. He was no lover of the

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

Nazis^ and he described to me with great glee Hitler’s first inter-
view with the ageing Reich’s President Hindenburg. The old
Marshal had not offered the former Corporal a chair, and
Hitler had been kept standing to attention before him until
finally dismissed without the usual handshake. But in the end,
undoubtedly to save himself, Meissner became the willing tool
of Goebbels, assisted in the forging of Hindenburg’s testament
and lent his countenance to the so-called “Joseph’s Legend” —
after Joseph Goebbels.

I was personally acquainted with many members of these
twenty-eight Cabinets, and certainly with most of the leading
lights, but when I try to recall even one really prominent
figure, apart from Walther Rathenau, I cannot. Not one of
them left any permanent mark on Germany’s political life.
They were all superficial, mediocre, and without real political
courage and initiative. Most of them seemed to have become
Ministers because they were good fellows at a Bier-Abend rather
than for any political qualities. The men of real political
format were in the Democratic Party, but its leadership was so
hopelessly doctrinaire, and it was so out of touch with reality,
that its popular support slumped heavily at each successive
election until finally nothing of it was left.

I don’t want to be misunderstood : the men I am discussing
were not all worthless and characterless. Indeed, amongst
them there were many highly educated men of wide interests
and personal integrity, men I was glad to number amongst my
friends ; but I am judging them now from the standpoint of
statesmanship and dominating political ability, and the
standard must therefore be higher than for ordinary everyday
life.. I was personally acquainted with almost every Reich’s
Chancellor and leading Minister throughout the Republic.
They were almost all honest men, but they were not statesmen.

At a time when the Nazis were already committing repeated
and systematic acts of provocative violence up and down the
country, and Frick in Thuringia was openly challenging the
power of the Reich’s Government, I travelled back from
Frankfort-on-Main to Berlin with the then Reich’s Chancellor
Wirth. We discussed his troubles. It was already clear that
the Reichswehr sympathized strongly with the Nazis — ^so much

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

so in fact that Wirth himself suspected that if it came to the
point the Reichswehr would turn against the Government.
The only organized force the Government could still rely on
was the police. I told him that if he wanted to find out one way
or the other exactly where the Reichswehr would stand in the
event of trouble he should put a company or two of police in
Reichswehr uniform and send them into action against the.
Nazis in Thuringia. No doubt this was an expedient that
would never have been necessary or desirable in a firmly
founded, well-ordered State, but the Weimar Republic was
nothing of the sort, and desperate diseases often require
desperate remedies. Before becoming Reich’s Chancellor,
Wirth had been a headmaster. He still was in outlook. He was
horrified at the idea. Horrified and rather indignant. “But
that would be perfidious,” he exclaimed. “Blessed are the pure
in spirit,” I replied. A few weeks later armed fighting took
place in Thuringia between the Nazis and workers in which the
Nazis gained the day and so consolidated their power that they
were able to use Thuringia as a base for operations farther
afield.

And then there was Paul Loebe, the Social Democratic
President of the Reichstag. The former printer was humane and
just in private life, with the puritanical outlook of the little man.
When the Nazis flocked into parliament for the first time as the
result of the 1931 elections it devolved on him to decide what
place in the House they should occupy. These vulgar hoodlums
and bankrupt existences obviously belonged on the extreme
left of the House, beyond the Communists, but because they
cunningly called themselves “National”, Loebe was fool enough
to put them on the extreme right of the House. Thanks to this
piece of political illiteracy the Nazis became, so to speak,
“acceptable at court”. Goebbels was never in any doubt as to
the enormous advantage of this position for his party. Every
social snob could now openly acknowledge membership. Apart
from being a Socialist Paul Loebe was also an enthusiastic
annexationist. He seemed to have more souls in his breast
than even Faustus.

And then there was the much-over-rated Stresemann, an
utter mediocrity. His horizon hardly broadened from the day

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

when as son of a small beer restaurant proprietor he wrote his
doctoral dissertation on the retail beer trade. In his later
political ideas he seems to have been influenced by the opinions
of a clever Polish journalist, Antonina Vallentin. By the time
he became at all politically known outside Germany Strese-
mann was a hopelessly sick man with goitre and Bright’s
disease, and he was greatly hindered by his state^ of health. He
managed to sign the Locarno Treaty in person, but his doctors
practically had to carry him there. At the League of Nations
session which dealt with the question of the Rhineland occupa-
tion he had to leave matters in the hands of the Social Democrat
Hermann Mueller. Outwardly Stresemann was in favour of the
so-called Fulfilment Policy, under which Germany was to carry
out her obligations under the Peace Treaty, but in reality he
encouraged the anti-treaty development of the Reichswehr to
the utmost.

Walther Rathenau was head and shoulders above them all.
Pie was a man of real breeding with a great talent for languages
and oratory. When he spoke there was no subsequent need to
alter as much as a comma for print. He had a very high fore-
head and two deep-set dark eyes. With his small pointed beard
he looked like an old Spanish nobleman and he acted like one.
He had a real presence and he conducted himself with studied
dignity in all situations. Sometimes I had the feeling that it was
all too studied, but it was extremely well done and with great
discretion. Even amongst friends his attitude was still reserved,
and his presence starched the atmosphere of any society.
“Jesus in tails”, Carl Fuerstenberg called him. He was a real
aesthete, dignified in all things, and he lived for beauty — a
platonic and passionless beauty. He had a deep philosophical
grounding and he was extraordinarily widely read, but his
thought was, I always felt, excessively disciplined. He was over-
intellectualized, of the type that finds it difficult to arrive at and
hold fast to a simple truth. My knowledge of him convinces me
that aufond he was a Talmudist and inclined to interpret a
fact according to a situation.

In his way of life he was an aristocratic Puritan. He was
extremely fastidious in his general judgments, but unassuming
as far as his own person was concerned. His writings show him
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Science, Politics and Personalities

to have been a theoretically convinced Communist. At the
same time he was an ardent patriot (when Germany faced
collapse at the end of the war his was almost the role of a
Gambetta) and a Democrat, though in his personal relations
he was extremely aristocratic and exclusive. He was a capitalist
industrialist and a President of trusts, but he aimed always at
social justice for the people. He was a Jew more from defiance
than convictions, but he never forgot that he was a Jew. As
Germany’s Foreign Minister he signed the Rapallo Treaty with
Soviet Russia, but nevertheless he was looked on with favour
by the Western Powers and he increased Germany’s prestige
with the League Council.

He was not a man of one piece. One could have made half a
dozen men out of the pieces which went to make up Rathenau,
and perhaps each of those pieces would have been then greater
than the whole. That is a form of tragedy sometimes met with ;
if, indeed, one regards it as a tragedy. Had Rathenau not taken
Germany’s raw material supplies in hand so successfully in
1915 her fighting front would have collapsed there and then.
It was primarily due to his strange discordant genius that
Germany was able to hold out for so long in the first world war,
and when disaster threatened in 1918 he was the only one of
Germany’s leaders to favour a levee en masse. And yet Rathenau
was a European par excellence and he was the first to restore
Germany’s damaged credit in the world at Geneva. And for
that the Nazis murdered him in the very early days of the
democratic republic.

The far-reaching significance of this insolent, provocative
and monstrous crime was not recognized by a weak government
divided against itself and undermined by party intrigue. It is
true that they gave the victim an official funeral with all
honours, let his body lie in state in the Reichstag, and organized
an impressive funeral cortege through the town \ and they even
passed an Exceptional Law for the Protection of the Republic,
but after a while its provisions were used chiefly against the
Left. The three so-called Republican Parties, the Centre
Party, the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party,
also used the occasion to found the Reich’s Banner Black, Red
and Gold (the colours of the unfortunate republic). But the

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opportunity for taking real and radical measures against Nazi
fascism was bungled and finally missed altogether. The result
was that the Nazi gang became more insolent and challenging
than ever. They had tasted blood and their murderous
appetites grew. And there was not one statesman of format
with courage enough to meet the challenge and break them as
they could have been broken. The orthodox pseudo-morality
which demanded that the bureaucratic letter of the law should
be observed down to the final comma even at a time when the
highest interests of the State cried out for swift and determined
action, a mechanical fiat justitia, pereat mundus, was once again
the cloak for that cowardly inactivity which marked the govern-
ments of the republic for the whole twenty years of its abortive
existence.

How shall one judge men like Otto Braun, the Social
Democratic Premier of Prussia, or his colleague Severing, the
Social Democratic Minister of the Interior, who, when removed
from office by von Papen’s coup de main^ could find nothing
better or more effective to do than file a formal plaint with the
Reich’s court? Their political lives were the grossest caricature
of any virile democratic idea.

Small wonder then that the Nazi terrorist organizations
spread rapidly all over the country; there was nothing to stop
them. Their activities became more and more shameless.
Conspiracies, murderous attacks on individuals, and so-called
Fehwie murders became more and more frequent. Many cases
came to the notice of the authorities, but little or nothing was
done to investigate them and bring the criminals to justice.
Connivers in high office regarded them tolerantly as national
deeds, and the organizations behind them as nuclear units
of the new military renaissance. In consequence the foul deeds
of these condottieri received a semi-immunity thanks to the
fraudulent nationalist cloak under which they were committed.

But it would be wrong to think that only German democracy
donned the ass’s skin. Didn’t the same cowardly laissez-faire
shield budding fascists in other countries too? It certainly did,
but in the countries which had emerged from the war as
victors this wretched indolence did not prove fatal — that was
the only difference. -And on the international field the same

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

evil principle was at work, if any such positive term can be
applied to a policy which feebly let things slide. It was wrong
“on principle’’ to interfere in the internal affairs of other
countries. How right and how comforting it sounded ! But if
only one of the leading States in this tired and war-weary
Europe had summoned up energy and courage enough to
intervene against a monstrous state of affairs which threatened
them all, how much better off the world would have been,
how much terrible suffering could have been avoided, how
many millions of lives could have been saved !

Once again humanity has a chance. Will it learn from the
past and seize the opportunity? Or will de Rochefoucauld’s
witty cynicism again be justified?

“We learn but one thing from history : the fact that we learn
nothing.”

CHAPTER IX

A CENTRE OF ART AND LETTERS

Politically the Weimar Republic was a pitiful spectacle,
but on other fields its graces were many. Post-revolutionary
Germany witnessed an unexampled development of the free
professions, of the fine arts and of letters. It was as though the
arts, held more or less in bond by Hohenzollern absolutism,
had burst their chains. A new and refreshing breeze swept over
the country. Even at the beginning of the century the potential
artistic energy of Germany began to show itself despite Wilhelm
and his commonplace ideas, but that was chiefly in the freer
German States such as Bavaria and Wurtemberg. Berlin still
seemed to sleep. French and English influences were at work in
South Germany: Rodin and the Barbizon school, Ruskin,
William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw. And the so-
called Jugend style and Secessionism were evidences of the
dynamic forces at work. There was Richard Strauss in music,
Klinger in sculpture, Liebermann, Seibl and Slevogt in paint-
ing, and Hauptmann, Schnitzler, Hoffmansthal and Wedekind
in the theatre, to mention only the better-known representatives
of the new movement. But it was only in defeated Germany,

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freed of Wilhelm the mediocrity, for whom all these new men
were “pavement artists”, that the new movement on the
cultural field swept forward, not only unhindered, but en-
couraged.

Germany created a new tradition — to destroy it subsequently
under the arch-mediocrity, Hitler. But artists and scientists
who lived through the post-revolutionary period in Germany
speak of the experience in tones of highest enthusiasm, even
rapture. For such people it was indeed a joy to be alive in such
a period, and particularly in Berlin, which became a cosmo-
politan centre of European culture as never before, a centre
of creative energy and of the finer pleasures — and of pleasures
less fine. Berlin was the centre of a truly impetuous creative
urge. New ideas and new “movements” shot out of the earth
like mushrooms. Apart from its own artists, Berlin extended
liberal hospitality to scores of important guests, hundreds of
valuable personalities and tens of thousands of visitors.

It was a centre, too, of the international tourist traffic.
Berlin had something new and interesting to offer to everyone,
including the many who had no eye for art or ear for music.
The Haus Vaterland at Potsdamer Platz, a Kempinsky manage-
ment, offered the national dishes of a dozen countries served
in as near an imitation of their home surroundings as could be
fabricated, A Heurigen wine? Certainly, sir, served by a
Grinzing waiter with oiled quiff and pointed moustaches. A
Spanish wine? Come into the Bodega. A Hungarian goulash?
A Turkish coffee? It was all there.

And for the more artistic and intellectual, Berlin’s repertoire
was at least as exhaustive. At the theatre there were pieces by
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Moliere, Calderon, Goldoni, or — to
come to our own day — Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Bjoernsen,
Heyermanns, Gorki, Wilde, Pirandello and a score of others.
Many dramatists both old and new owed their very reputation to
the appreciation Berlin showed to their works. The same was
true of painting. Few did more to establish the reputation of
the French impressionists in the world than Paul Cassirer, the
Berlin art dealer. Seurat, Cezanne, Manet, Monet and, in par-
ticular, van Gogh owe much of their reputation to the apprecia-
tion they found in Germany. The mystic Greco was discovered,
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

so to speakj by Gossio in Spain, but internationally his apprecia-
tion goes back largely to the sure judgment of Meier-Graefe, and
indeed older painting owes a debt to him, and Friedlaender.

One of Germany’s most brilliant achievements falls within
this post-revolutionary period and owes much to the liberal
support of the Weimar authorities. In a time of real economic
stress money was found to finance the building into the
National Museum of the great flight of steps of the classic
Pergamon Altar (over 300 feet wide and almost forty feet deep),
together with the frieze. The prime mover in this grand task
was the archaeologist Wiegand, a passionate excavator, equipped
both with tremendous knowledge and true classic piety. Many
of us helped him to unpack and sort out the stones and fit piece
to piece. It was a glorious and fascinating jig-saw puzzle, and
we were greatly helped in its final solution by the practical
good sense of the old Greek architects and builders. In order
to reduce to a minimum the risk of accidents owing to the
enormous breadth of the flight, and to force people who went
up and down to take more care than usual, they built the steps
in varying heights. This simple idea compelled the pedestrian
to watch his step and it drew his attention whilst walking down,
or climbing up, from the dizzy sweep of the whole. It was the
variation in heights which gave us the much-needed clue for
the correct assorting of the thousands of pieces which lay
chaotically around.

In the same gigantic work of art on the so-called Museum
Island there is the built-in fagade of a Roman civic building
and a unique Lion Wall of Assyrian-Babylonian art. Golden
lions show up against a wall of blue enamel stones, the whole
an almost tv/enty-foot-high mosaic. The reconstruction suc-
ceeded perfectly, and it represents a unique treasure of inter-
national antique art.

London almost became the owner of this true magnificence.
The ship carrying the precious stones was on its way through the
Persian Gulf to Hamburg when the first world war broke out.
The captain put in to Lisbon and in some way or the other his
cargo became the property of the Portuguese Government,
which then offered it as a sort of job lot to the British Govern-
ment for ;^30,ooo. British archaeological circles recognized its

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

value, but they were not influential enough to raise the purchase
price. All the documents in the case are still in the possession
of my friend Professor Yahuda, whom I first met in London.
It redounds to Germany’s credit that despite her economic
difficulties she paid an even higher price for the treasure and
placed it in the capable and worthy hands of Professor Wiegand.
Archaeology is, so to speak, the biological analysis of human
history, and it was my own inborn biological hang which made
me deeply interested in it, and to the best of my ability I
supported not only German archaeology, but also the Syrian
excavations carried out by the Austrian Archaeological Society.

The applied arts also flourished in this great spring of
German freedom (I need hardly say that I use the word freedom
here in no political sense). New materials were drawn upon
and provided fresh inspiration. Bruno Paul was one of the
leading spirits on this field. He was a visionary of sound practical
ability, and he had a real genius for gathering everyone around
him who had something new to do or say. I would not call him
a genius, but he certainly showed genius in organizing and
helping pioneers to blaze new paths. He was not a man who
spoke much, and when he did speak it was always preceded by
a little nervous cough. But what he did say was very much
to the point. I had quite a lot to do with him in connection
with the building of two of my houses, and I learnt much from
him.

The work which really made his name was, I suppose, the
building of Haus Hainerberg in the Taunus for my parents-in-
law. During the first world war my mother-in-law turned it
into a sort of recreation and rest home for convalescent officers.
One of the guests was a Lieutenant named Ribbentrop. He
was much disliked by the staff, who christened him Drippy-
Droppy. The ‘Von” came later. When the Nazis came to power
von Ribbentrop, as he was by then, confiscated the house and
made it into a recreation and rest home for Nazis, A picture
of the house was used on one of the Nazi postage stamps to
create the impression that this beautiful rest home was one of
the cultural achievements of the Nazi regime.

Applied art in Germany did much to improve taste in general
and get rid of the monstrosities of Wilhelminian taste — I say

J26

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Wilhelminian taste, but the type of thing I mean was not
confined to Germany. The long period of economic prosperity
throughout Europe unfortunately coincided with a deplorable
artistic period. The middle classes in Germany, who had
become rich, spent their money on ponderous furniture over-
loaded with knobs, scrolls and “carvings’’; plush hangings
with many tassels, enormous over-decorated mantel-pieces,
packed with “ornaments”, and all the rest of the horror
summed up in the one expressive German word Kitsch, Part of
the battle against this sort of thing was the opening of an
Anii-Kitsch Museum in Stuttgart, where a collection of weird
and wonderful examples of the genre formed a sort of domestic
art chamber of horrors.

When the period of intense housing shortage set in and busi-
nesses began to line the Kurfuerstendam, formerly almost ex-
clusively a residential street, many of the worst monstrosities
which disgraced the fa9ades were done away with and, with
the help of modern architects, replaced by new, simple and
dignified lines. The good work of improving public taste was
never completed. Much had been done, but much still re-
mained to be done, when the tawdry vulgarity of Hitlerism
descended like a blight. But it is at least deeply satisfactory to
know that the new barbarians could not undo all the work
that had been done, though they did their best. They opened
two exhibitions in Munich, the one containing “pure Nazi art”
(Schickelgruber as Lohengrin complete with shining armour,
upraised sword and patient swan, etc.), and the other intended
as a warning example of what the public ought not to like.
All the items in this latter exhibition were “degenerate art”.
Unfortunately for the organizers your true Nazi has no use
for art of any sort, not even for anything which claims to be art,
so he didn’t go to either, whilst the general public practically
boycotted the pious exhibition of Nazi “art” and flocked to the
other one, with the result that it had to be closed to put an end
to what had turned into a demonstration. Those of us who had
done our best to support the movement towards better taste
were deeply gratified and highly amused ; our seed had borne
fruit.

All our State institutions might be internationalized with

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

advantage, but art must remain national, at least up to a
point. I say ^^must”, but it will on its own; it does already.
It is generally recognized to-day that the roots of art lie in the
national character. Not even the greatest genius rises above or
goes beyond these limits. The German musician Haendel went
to England, changed his name to Handel, and lived there for
the rest of his life, but even at the end of it he never produced
anything but German music. Dvorak remained a Czech of
Czechs in the United States, even when he used American
folk-song motifs. Liszt was a Hungarian in Weimar; Spontini
an Italian in Berlin; Chopin a Pole in Paris; Rachmaninoff
a Russian in the United States. Lukas Cranach and Holbein
remained German in England ; Rubens a Belgian whether in
Vienna or Italy. Poets change even less than painters and
musicians, whilst scientists themselves remain in the last resort
a product of the whole national (not to be confused with
nationalist) atmosphere which produces them. The Jews, scat-
tered all over the world and partakers in many national cultures,
are a living proof of this thesis. Many Jews have" won Nobel
Prizes, but it is interesting to note that no Jew from Montenegro,
Bulgaria or Tierra del Fuego was ever amongst them. Only
those Jews who enjoyed the privilege of living in highly
civilized and cultured countries had a chance. Thus race alone
is not the deciding factor. National environment is the deciding
factor.

In Germany education remained the affair of the individual
States, with the result that there was lively rivalry between
them. Each wanted to do better than the other, and the com-
petition was not a bad thing. In fact there is no doubt that
Germany owed the leading cultural position she occupied in the
world for a considerable period to this inter-State competition
in cultural matters. Two-and-twenty universities competed
vigorously with each other, and the same thing was true of
Italy until political unification put an end to it and brought all
the universities under centralized direction. Almost every
duodecimo principality in Germany had not only its own
central educational institutions, but also its own opera and
other art centres, and then, of course, it depended on the
munificence and artistic taste and understanding of the Royal

Science^ Politics and Personalities

ruler whether the standard was high or not. It very often was,
as a matter of prestige if nothing else. Fortunately the German
revolution of 1918 did not interfere with this healthy particu-
larism, though it drove out the Tom-Thumb royalties. It is
right and proper, and altogether advantageous, that a certain
measure of particularism should remain both in science and
art. When Hitler came to power in Germany it was one of the
many good things he abolished.

Prussia was the biggest and most powerful State in the
German Reich, and it was Prussia which seized the cultural
lead. The technical organizer of Prussian science, if I can use
such an expression and be understood, was the permanent
official AlthofF. He lived simply and his whole passion was
in his work. He coupled healthy cynicism with a deep know-
ledge of human nature. Both stood him in very good stead. He
knew the weakness of human beings for decorations and titles
and he exploited it as another man would exploit a gold mine.
The ‘Voluntary subscriptions’’ he obtained in this way went to
further his great plans. Amongst other things he re-organized
the whole system of higher education and brought the main
body of scientific research into special research institutes. He
was instrumental in founding innumerable new central insti-
tutes, and the crowning effort was the foundation of the famous
Kaiser Wilhelm Society. A whole series of world-famous
institutes were set up within the framework of this society for
the study of physics, chemistry, biology, plant physiology,
experimental botanies, tannery, navigation, etc., and provided
with the best obtainable personnel, including Harnack,
Einstein, Haber, Goldschmidt, Bauer, Neuberg, Warburg,
Hahn and Meitner — men to whom the world of science owes a
tremendous debt.

Althoff did not succeed in fulfilling his dream of making the
outlying Berlin suburb of Dahlem into a university town, but
he laid the basis for it. He died a poor man, although in his
time many, many millions had passed through his hands to
meet the enormous financial burdens his innumerable founda-
tions involved. His “Last Will and Testament” was the crown-
ing piece of cynicism of his life. Although he had nothing he
“bequeathed” large sums to his various institutions, and after

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

each sum was the name of the prominent banker or industrialist
who was instructed to pay it, followed by the particular reward
in the next Honours List he was to receive for doing so. His
frank cynicism was thoroughly justified, and not a man refused
to pay the sum “bequeathed” in his name. That was, of course,
under the Kaiser ; when the German Republic arrived one ojf
its few revolutionary acts was the abolition of orders and titles.
I remember Erzberger once saying to me: “This governing
business is costing me far too much (he liked to speak in nomina-
tivus majestaticus because he was a democrat). Til have to
re-introduce titles and decorations.” With AlthofF the business
was perfectly honest and straightforward: everyone knew
exactly why the order, decoration or whatever it was had been
conferred, and that at least was something that so often re-
mained in impenetrable obscurity.

Althoff’s republican successor (with the exception of a few
weeks right at the beginning when the near-Spartakist Hoff-
mann was in office) was Haenisch, who came from a well-to-
do North-German Conservative family with whom he had
broken off relations early on owing to his socialistic tendencies.
He was an upright and idealistic man, and his determined
championing of the oppressed and exploited had made him
into the black sheep of his family, whose members had no
sympathy with such outlandish ideals (as they were then), and
still less with any attempt to put them into practice. Haenisch
was a tall, broad-shouldered man inclined to put on fat and
he was very careless in the matter of clothing. Not only did he
identify himself with the interests of the masses, but he even
adopted their mode of living. He married a working-class girl,
a happy, cheerful soul, and he gave up wearing a collar and tie,
and when his high office compelled him to wear them he did
so with a carelessness which betokened his contempt.

Haenisch had a real understanding for art. He was open and
uncomplicated in his relations, and he could be mildly sarcastic
when he thought the situation called for it. He had abandoned
his bourgeois upbringing, but it had not altogether let go of
him, and I think it was this that often prevented his being
ruthless and decisive when opportunity demanded. More than
once I have heard him complain comically: “I wish my
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

radical predecessor [i.e., Hoffmann] had stayed in office a bit
longer. He would have cleared up still more and not left
me so much to do/’ All in all Haenisch was a good, sound
character, but he was not a very effective one.

The born proletarian is a different matter. Everything
beyond his station he is inclined to dub “Boorjoys”, and he
is anxious to deprive the ‘‘Boorjoys” of everything he would like
to see the proletariat have. That is his idea of social justice.
He also has a strong tendency to dismiss formal education with
contempt, and to attach much more importance to science
than to art. In medicine he tends to prefer empirical medicine
to school theories; in art the fussy, the overloaded and the
highly decorative takes his eye rather than the simple, the serene
and the well proportioned. The proletarian either remains too
low or aims too high. It takes him time to find the golden
mean. He is invariably mistrustful and he mistakes that for
healthy scepticism. When in office he has a tendency to back
the outsiders, the conspirators, the men with bees in their
bonnets, though the real revolutionary elements of science are
seldom to be found amongst them. The outsiders think they
have been oppressed ; there has been a conspiracy to keep them
out. It is the aim of the proletarian to free society from such
injustices and he is therefore inclined to push such people
forward. Of course, sometimes a violet which has been blushing
unseen amidst the undergrowth is brought to light, but usually
the harvest is of nettles, thistles and thorns.

Haenisch, the would-be proletarian, had similar tendencies.
Under his aegis the theatres began to produce the works of
unknown and third-rate dramatists. Professors and teachers
were appointed in various institutes primarily because they had
been ignored before. Nature-cure apostles and the champions
of obscure methods of treatment (Friedmann’s absurd slow-
worm tuberculin vaccine comes to my mind) were given
professorial chairs. Proletarian infants were stuffed with milk
heavily reinforced with vitamins — ^too full of vitamins, as it
turned out, for the post-natal clinics were soon faced with
serious metabolic disorders as the result of hypervitaminosis.
Folk- Art was, as might be expected, particularly encouraged,
until the results showed that the thing was ridiculous. There

JdnoSy The Story of a Doctor

is only one kind of art, and that refuses to be categorized,
or ‘"classified” in that sense. I very much doubt whether such
an artificially fostered “movement” can ever be of any use. In
any case, this experimental period soon came to an end, and
all that remained of it was the abolition of class education, an
act of real significance.

After a few years Haenisch was succeeded by the Orientalist
Professor Carl Becker, a member of the Democratic Party and
a man of real classical education with roots in the Stefan
George school. This circle consisted of literary stylists of a
selective rather than democratic outlook. They were patriotic,
but by no means nationalistic. When the first world war broke
out, Stefan George, the leader of the circle, declared: “We’ll
ignore it”. The artistic outlook of this circle was an earnest
classicism based on Greek ideals. Becker chose most of his
collaborators from amongst them, and on the whole it must be
said that it was not a bad choice.

In educational and artistic questions Becker was undoubtedly
of exceptional ability, but unfortunately he felt that he could
get on without political convictions. He was devoted to his
task, so much so, in fact, that he was anxious to cling to office
under all circumstances in order to be able to perform it, and
to do this he did his best to avoid trouble with any of the
influential political parties. If he could avoid controversy he
did. Art and science are certainly in the abstract above or
beyond politics, but a Minister in a democratic republic
charged with their encouragement just cannot afford to be.
Under Becker’s supine regime the German universities became
rotten through and through with radical-nationalistic and Nazi
elements, the noisiest and most brutal of all. I am referring
here to the faculties rather than to the students. Poor worthy
Professor Becker believed that the struggle against brute force
and violence could be successfully conducted with purely
intellectual and spiritual weapons. When the German uni-
versities developed more and more into centres of political
tumult rather than of learning he was too weak, too discon-
certed and too disheartened to take the knife to the angry
abscess and cut it out ruthlessly. That was the only solution.
He did not adopt it, and in consequence Germany’s universities
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went from bad to worse. In fact, it was from them that violence
and brutality spread out into the rest of German public life.

There is a lesson for the future here. Universities should not
be permitted the irresponsible independence they abused under
the Weimar Republic. Their autonomy should be sufficient
to permit the full enjoyment of academic freedom, but no more.
A system of university proctors and university justice should be
introduced or revived, and the universities should jealously
guard their own honour. No opinion and no proper expression
of opinion should be persecuted, but where the holders of
opinions, popular or otherwise, have resort to violence to
further them, they must be met by greater violence, and that
with all energy and despatch.

I was not only the medical adviser of Becker and his family,
but also an intimate friend. Where appointments were dis-
puted he often turned to me for advice, and I was partly re-
sponsible for the appointment of a number of people one or
two of whom subsequently developed into characterless hangers-
on of the Nazi regime. No names, no pack drill. The pack drill
would be for me for having shown such bad judgment of
character.

As I have said, my relationship to Becker was a very close
one, and the question of my own appointment to this or that
office arose tentatively more than once, but I always refused,
and I think I was right to do so. Mine was a Hohenzollern
professional appointment, and I felt I could do more good in
the background than by taking an official appointment.

Amongst the inner circle of Becker’s friends was the dramatist
Fritz von Unruh. On one occasion after having spent the
evening at Becker’s house we walked together through the
Tiergarten. It was a lovely night in early summer, and the
dawn was already beginning to break when we made our way
back to my house to have a drink. We had it in my laboratory,
and there amidst all the usual paraphernalia of a scientist’s
workshop von Unruh felt himself inspired with the old Homun-
culus legend, and we discussed the fantastic question of the
child in the retort. From that we went on to the moral and
legal aspects of the problem of the unwanted child. Supposing
a woman was with child and unwilling to bear it; supposing

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that the father was in agreement with her ; and supposing the
doctor who was called in to get rid of the unborn child preferred
to save it. That was the basic idea of the drama produced so
successfully by Reinhardt under the title of "Thaea”. The
conscientious gynaecologist saves the child and brings it up as
his own. The child, a girl, becomes a famous film actress. The
conflict arises when all three — the mother, the father and the
foster father — make their claims. I was the model for the doctor.
The working out of the play and everything connected with its
final performance took up a lot of my time and gave me a
tremendous amount of pleasure. I have always regarded Phaea
as my fourth child in addition to the three I already had.

Despite the weaknesses of Becker as Minister for Fine Arts,
his reign was a remarkable period of scientific and artistic
progress, a real period of magnificent flowering. He founded
three new universities, but his main encouragement was given
to institutions for scientific research. He also re-organized the
elementary-school system. The modernization and enlarge-
ment of SchinkePs classic opera-house Unter den Linden was
carried out under his direction, and it was done with great
taste and artistic ability, so that the original character of the
building was admirably retained. The. first estimate of costs
was three million marks. In the end it cost twenty-six million
marks, but parliament granted it without a murmur. The
Kaiser Friedrich Museum was also greatly enriched under
Becker : Wiegand the archaeologist was enabled to continue his
excavations, and Professor Burghardt was given a free hand in
the development of his unique Egyptological museum.

Burghardt came back to Germany from Egypt loaded with
rich booty. He was a man of unusually profound knowledge
and in consequence he enjoyed a great reputation with the
Egyptian authorities. He spoke the language fluently and he
could read a papyrus as though it were a modern book. With
his crisp dark curly hair and his negroid complexion he might
have been mistaken for an Egyptian himself. As an excavator
he did not have things all his own way by any means. There
were excavators of all nationalities at work, and they were
extremely jealous of each other, doing their utmost to conceal
their own finds and to discover the other fellow’s. They were a
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handful for the Egyptian authorities to deal with. The first
great robber crusades were carried out by Napoleon, and from
then on the Egyptologists of all countries fell on Egypt like a
flock of vultures. They dug and they tunnelled wherever they
thought there was anything of value concealed, and they
brought up everything they found and hauled it off to their
own museums. Before long it began to look as though Egypt
would be gutted bare, so in the end the Egyptians passed a law
prohibiting the export of any antiquity without permission.
Many were the schemes and tricks thought up to get round the
law, but nevertheless, it was no longer so easy, and much of
value now remained in Egypt.

One day Burghardt found the head of Queen Nefertete,
or rather a representation of it. It is one of the noblest works of
art of any epoch. Burghardt was in no doubt that this game
was well worth the candle : Queen Nefertete had to go back to
Berlin with him. He would have sold his immortal soul for
her, and, scruples played no role. The sculpture was executed
in beautiful marble and the Egyptian experts would not have
failed to see its great value at once, so Burghardt greased it and
then covered it up with plaster. By the time he had finished
with it the Egyptian authorities gave it no more than a cursory
glance before issuing the necessary permit for its export in
company with various other items of only minor value. Queen
Nefertete went to Berlin, where the revelation caused an
artistic sensation. The price Professor Burghardt paid was
never to see his beloved Egypt again.

There were many prominent figures of international repute
engaged at Germany’s universities in those days. Emil Fischer,
the chemist and Nobel Prizewinner, was one of them. He was a
man of great character and determination. He decided to
reckon with thirty years of active scientific life, so he divided
this period into three equal parts and he worked ten years each
almost to the day on the investigation of {a) albumen, {b)
fats, and [c) carbohydrates. The results of each period were
embodied in a thick volume. He was a man of great intellectual
elasticity and could turn his attentions from one field of scientific
research to the other with ease. On one occasion he was
travelling to Italy with the Halle clinical specialist Mehring for

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the Easter holidays. In Verona the axle of their sleeping-car
seized up and a new car had to be coupled onto the train.
Emil Fischer spent the hour it took walking up and down the
platform. In that time he had discovered the world-famous
sleeping drug, barbituric acid. As a compliment to Verona,
in which town the inspiration had come to him, he called it
Veronal. Most of the sleeping drugs at present on sale com-
mercially, no matter under what name, owe their origin either
directly or indirectly to Fischer’s happy discovery of Veronal.
Not that he was always so happy in his discoveries : for instance
his use of selenium against tumours proved a failure. He died
of tuberculosis, and towards the end it greatly reduced his
scientific capacities, but he worked right up to the last, and then
died much as a candle that gutters down to its base and then
suddenly goes out.

I was personally acquainted with very many members of
the various faculties, but most of them were too pedantically
professorial to be worthy of mention here. As scientists they
were known in scientific circles, but as individuals they lacked
interest. Rubner, a Bavarian and the discoverer of calorific
metabolism, was a very rough diamond. Roethe, the Germanic
scholar, was a narrow-minded super-patriot. Erich Schmidt,
a man of very different calibre, was one of the few Europeans
left. He carried a whole academy of literary knowledge in his
head, and he was elegant both in his person and in his style.
His masterly Lessing biography is the standard work on the
subject. Laue, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work
in connection with the breaking up of X-rays, was a quiet,
modest man. When the Nazis came to power he did not openly
oppose them, but as far as I know he never did or said anything
in their favour. And then there was the great Max Planck, who
was awarded the Nobel Prize for his ‘‘quantum theory”. In the
beginning, more from obstinacy than anything else, I suspect, he
made a show of opposing the Nazis, and for a time he even
protected Einstein’s family, but then he gave way more sud-
denly and more completely than was necessary, and he even
used his great scientific authority to support the Nazi regime
on the wireless. How a man of Planck’s intellectual and
scientific qualities could accept the idea of “National-Socialist
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

physics”, and place himself under a nitwit like the Heidel'berger
Lenart, I don’t know. A man can be a nitwit even if he is of
some capacity in his profession, and there is no doubt that
Lenart’s discovery of the rays named after him was a scientific
achievement, but the man’s brain was clouded by pathological
anti-semitism. I remember the memorable session of the
Congress of Naturforscher und Aerzte when Lenart rose to
attack the theory of relativity. Einstein answered him calmly
and scientifically, developing the objections ad absurdum. It
was a scientific mangling from which Lenart never recovered,
but when Hitler came to power, he rose to high place on the
strength of his anti-semitism.

Planck suffered tragedy in his domestic life. He had two
daughters. One married and died in childbed after an attack
of septic tonsilitis. Later on the widower married Planck’s
second daughter, and she suffered exactly the same fate, and
two small grandchildren were left motherless. The bitter blow
brought him nearer to Einstein than even their joint scientific
work. But the ageing scientist seemed to have forgotten his
close friendship with Einstein. If I had not myself heard Max
Planck supporting Nazi Germany on the wireless I could never
have believed it possible.

CHAPTER X

THE TWO RATHENAUS, RANTZAU
AND RUSSIA

It is clear enough to-day for both friends and foes that
Russia is going to play a very important role in the building of
whatever new world is going to be built. It was not always as
clear. Too many people in responsible positions were both
short-sighted and over-anxious. The fear of Russia existed long
before the fear of Bolshevism.

One of the rarer spirits who were neither the one nor the
other was Emil Rathenau, the father of Walther Rathenau.
The latter’s great personality and political ability, the high
office he held and the tragic end he met have done much to
overshadow the father, but Emil Rathenau was a figure of

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

considerable economic and therefore political importance in his
own rights a real industrial pioneer.

He was one of the founders, one can say the founder, of the
famous Allgemeine Elektrizitaets Gesellschaft, better known by
its initials A.E.G. The other three were Felix Deutsch, the son
of a famous Cantor at the Breslau Synagogue ; Paul Mamroth,
a small business man of Breslau ; and Paul Jordan, a young
engineer from Baden. The founding of this tremendous
industrial undertaking took place in a small and sparsely
furnished room. Frau Deutsch afterwards told me that the best
piece of furniture was a divan with three legs, which had to be
used very carefully.

All these four men had remarkable qualities as business men,
technicians or publicists, and each did much to make the A.E.G.
into the big firm it is to-day (or was, perhaps). However,
the outstanding, the really monumental figure was Emil
Rathenau. He was an engineer by profession, but I don’t think
he knew much about physics. His great service to the new firm
was that at a time when most people regarded electricity as an
interesting scientific problem rather than as a source of energy
capable of practical exploitation he recognized its enormous
technical and economic significance. One can even say that it
was Rathenau who popularized electricity as a source of
energy — at least for Europe.

At a session of the Physical Society the mighty Helmholtz
himself had declared that whilst the gramophone had a big
future, the telephone would never develop beyond the stage
of a toy, Emil Rathenau was not impressed by this verdict,
and he continued his efforts to introduce the telephone. He
applied to Stephan, the Reich’s Postmaster-General of the day,
for a licence. As luck would have it Stephan was a man of
capacity and initiative with an open mind for new things. He
listened to Rathenau, recognized the importance of the tele-
phone, and it was introduced. German postal services owed
very much to Stephan, and Bismarck said of him that he had
only one failing : “Vanity weighed him down like a mortgage”,
I made Emil Rathenau’s acquaintance when he was getting
on in years and already a sick man, but he made an impression
of dynamic energy on me; a man of clear judgment and calm

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Science, Politics and Personalities

objectivity without a trace of sentiment. He was suffering
from diabetic gangrene, but despite very considerable physical
pain he still attended all important sessions in person and his
will still dominated the concern. He had a keen eye for capacity
in others and a real ability for using them in his service. It
has been said of him with some justice that his knowledge was
not very deep but his ability enormous. When he needed
knowledge he bought it. He kept a staff of scientific ' ‘coolies’’,
who, unlike their employer, knew a lot but were not very able.
In general, he regarded scientists as means to his practical
ends ; he used them as he wanted them, treated them badly and
paid them badly.

An example of his unsentimental ruthlessness was his attitude
to his patentees. Once the main idea was there he would never
allow them to work it out in detail. He feared that an inventor
devoted only to the child of his own brain, and wearing
blinkers against all other influences and considerations, would
hamper rather than help forward the practical development of
the idea. And therefore he got rid of him.

Emil Ratbenau was a self-made man in more than the
ordinary sense of the word. He was intensely practical and one
of the most original men I have ever met. In all our long con-
versations and discussions I cannot remember his ever having
appealed to anyone else’s ideas in support of his own, or ever
having used a quotation. What he said was his own. I have
said that he was a self-made man ; he was that in the best sense.
He was certainly proud of his successes, and he had a right
to be. But as for outward recognition, orders, decorations and
the like, he would have none of them. He was Germany’s
greatest captain of industry and he did not possess a single title
or distinction. Wilhelm II was a guest in his house on one
occasion, and other guests who were present report that in the
middle of a discussion Rathenau asked: ^^Your Majesty, do
you mind if I have a sandwich? I feel hungry.” For anyone
else to have desires and express them in the presence of the All
Highest was an enormity. It must not be thought that this was
a demonstration of “Man’s pride before the throne of Kings” ;
nor a bit of it. Emil Rathenau’s was an uncomplicated nature.
He really was hungry.

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^His career was a vast success, but it was not a success easily
won. He had to fight hard and long. In a letter published
posthumously his son wrote : ‘Tor years my father was regarded
as a mere adventurer . . . until international recognition made
his real significance clear”. The prophet is without honour in
his own country. And how often has Germany hesitated to
grant recognition until other countries have first honoured her
sons! Emil Rathenau came from one of the old-established
Jewish patrician families of Berlin (the Rathenaus, the Lieber-
manns, the Herzs, the Mendelssohns, the Friedlaenders, the
Reichenheims, the Marquardts, the Oppenheims, etc.), and he
was therefore by no means an uneducated man, but there were
big gaps in his education. He had no feeling for music, for
instance, and he had very little time for intellectuals. This
was probably one of the reasons why the father and his highly
intellectual son did not always get on well together. It was only
towards the end of the old man’s life that there was a real
rapprochement. The son Walther was a man of exceptionally
wide education and culture. Not only was his knowledge of
physics and engineering technique most profound, but he was
also a truly scholarly man, and it was this last the old man
regarded with suspicion. He was practical himself to the point of
brutality, though in private life he was amiable enough. At
one time the son was in charge of a factory in Bitterfeld, and
after two years it proved an economic failure. Now Walther
Rathenau was a highly capable business man, and the failure
was not his fault, but his father was inclined to believe that it
was. It was only when the son rose to real political eminence
that the father began to realize that his son possessed attributes
of great value outside the world of business.

Emil Rathenau was fundamentally opposed to the policy
of the Kaiser, and in consequence he was not persona grata in
official circles, where he was regarded as something of a
frondeur. To Rathenau the Kaiser’s colonial and big-navy
policy was not only useless but highly dangerous. It is hardly
necessary to-day to point out how right he was. For him Ger-
many’s natural colony lay on her own eastern doorstep:
Russia, He was tremendously in favour of what was then
becoming known as “peaceful penetration”, and by the
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

beginning of the century he had already established close com-
mercial relations with Russia, invariably choosing men of radical
views as his representatives there. When they came to Berlin
they were welcome guests both in the house of Rathenau and
in that of his chief partner, Felix Deutsch.

Deutsch was of medium height, broad, stocky, and tre-
mendously agile. He was devoted to the arts, and in particular
music, and he lived in a sort of little palace complete with
a very fine organ. He was the brother-in-law of the popular
American banker and maecenas Otto H. Kahn — ^known to
New York as '‘Otto H.’’ — who to the end of his days spoke
American with a Mannheim accent. The two brothers-in-law
were great patrons of the arts. It was in the house of Felix
Deutsch that Richard Strauss, seated next to the French
Ambassador, Frangois Poncet, heard the first performance of
twelve songs of his "Kraemerspieger* sung by the very attrac-
tive Swedish singer, Sigrid Johannssen. But evenings like this
represented merely the lyrical side of Felix Deutsch’s existence.
His business eye was fixed on very unlyrical aims in all parts of
the world, and particularly in Russia.

Many leading Bolshevists were in close touch with the A.E.G.,
some of them were even occasionally its employees, and the
tradition of close relations with Russia persisted even after Emil
Rathenau’s death. The first important foreign agreement
defeated Germany was able to sign was the so-called Rapallo
Treaty. It was drawn up in February in the house of Felix
Deutsch, though it was not signed and made known to the world
until several months later in Rapallo. This daring step did not
please the rest of the world, but it greatly increased the prestige
of Walther Rathenau, then Germany’s Foreign Minister and
President of the A.E.G. after his father’s death. Walther
Rathenau was, of course, acting in the interests of the German
Reich when he signed the Rapallo Treaty, but the A.E.G. had
played a big role in bringing it about.

Felix Deutsch was a very good friend of mine, and as his house
rapidly became a sort of social headquarters for the representa-
tives of the Soviet Power when they were in Berlin I had ample
opportunity of making their acquaintance. German influence
in the first period of the Russian Revolution was very strong.

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

Germans had done more than any other foreigners to assist in
the rebuilding of Russia, and Germany’s position was therefore
a very favourable one. If Germany had maintained the policy
of the two Rathenaus, Felix Deutsch and Rantzau, one of her
cleverest diplomats, the situation to-day would be very, very
different, and perhaps the world might even have been spared
the terrible holocaust it has just experienced. It is another
example of the fact that intelligent outsiders very often see
farther and do better than the professional experts. I should
not like to condemn professional diplomats altogether. Count
Rantzau himself was an instance of a professional who could
see quite as far as the amateur, but amongst his colleagues he
remained a voice crying aloud in the wilderness, and no one
heeded him.

I was deeply impressed by the fact that all the Bolshevist
leaders I met were fanatically devoted to their cause. They
had the faith of apostles. Not one that I met would ever have
compromised his principles, but they were all intelligent men
and they were well aware that many of the things they and their
comrades had done were wrong, and that many of their aims
were perhaps impossible to attain; but that was immaterial by
comparison with their cause as a whole, and, without exception,
they were all firmly convinced of its righteousness and justifica-
tion. None of them thought that the social millennium lay
round the corner. They knew better than most people that
fundamental social and economic changes take time to develop,
a very long time. They knew, too, that they would never enjoy
the fruits nf their struggle. It was this fact that stamped them
for me as amongst the idealists and the martyrs. Your capitalist
works for the. day, for himself and for those nearer him ; these
Bolshevists were working — and often sacrificing their personal
happiness and comfort — ^for the future and for generations to
come. They had the courage and self-effacing devotion of
fighters in a cause greater than themselves.

I have met many prominent men in my time, representatives
of this country’s policy or of that cause, and only too often
I have found that what they said in public was different to
what they were p^repared to admit in private. With these
Bolshevists it was different ; even in the most confidential talks
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

they still passionately upheld their cause. But they were not
stiff-necked and fanatically orthodox. On the contrary, they
were all real politicians in the sense of Bismarck, for whom
politics represented the science of the attainable. Revolutions
need time to mature. The preparation of the ground is the
important thing. Excessive haste can only imperil the final
success. Those acquainted with the history of revolutions know
that the seed is sown long, long before there is any sign of the
first shoots. And this was as true of the Bolshevist Revolution
as of any other.

It was in 1916, when I was called to Zuerich for a consulta-
tion in connection with the banker Leopold Koppel, the owner
of the Auer and Osram firms, who was down with pneumonia,
that I first made the acquaintance of the man who played
perhaps the biggest role in the relations between Russia and the
rest of Europe in the first world war. His name was Helphand
and he was more generally known as Parvus. His role was
interesting, but thoroughly disreputable. He was a master spy,
or, better, a master of espionage. Many threads of the Russian
revolutionary emigration went through his hands. He was a
thorough-going blackguard of great cunning and enormous
insolence ; a great bluffer, but at the same time extraordinarily
well informed. Strong principles the man had too ; the stronger
they were the more he had to be paid before, he consented to
abandon them.

He struck me as a very lively and jovial companion, a man
of real wit and intelligence. His appearance was certainly not
prepossessing. He had a podgy face with a bearded double
chin, and bright little eyes sunk deep in fat. His shortish legs
had to carry a corpulent body, and when he walked his arms
hung back comically as though to maintain his balance. He
smoked big and expensive cigars and drank champagne;
invariably starting off the day with a bottle. Extraordinary
stories were told about him. His quarters were in Zuerich in
those days and it was from that point of vantage that he
directed an organization for espionage and counter-espionage.
To give him a formal standing he was supposed to be the Swiss
agent of Zaharoff, the Greek dealer in armaments. I don’t
know whether I can call him a lady’s man, but he kept a regular

Jdrios^ The Story of a Doctor

harem of from four to six young women, all blonde andJPj^
plump, according to his taste. All in all he was a very excep-
tional personality, and when I returned to Berlin I drew the
attention of Count Rantzau, who was then German Minister
in Copenhagen, to the man's possibilities, and soon after that I
heard that Rantzau was using him.

Count Rantzau's estate was in Holstein on the Danish
frontier. He was the twin brother of the Kaiser's Chamberlain
and the nephew of Countess Rantzau, one of the intimates of
the Kaiserin. All these three Rantzaus were of exceptional
intelligence and at the same time of high character. Thanks to
the privileged position of their family at the Danish Court,
which was itself closely related to the Russian Court, they were
all well informed of political and social currents in Russia.
Count Rantzau’s aim was, of course, to separate Russia from
the Entente and bring about a separate peace which would
release Germany from the fatal struggle on two fronts. In the
meantime, at least he succeeded in strengthening Germany's
influence at the Russian Court, particularly through the
German-born Czarina.

I have said that he used Helphand, and that gentleman had to
be paid highly for his services. A contract to the value of 30
million marks for coal deliveries to Denmark was generally
expected to fall as usual to Stinnes, but to the astonishment of
those not in the know it went to Helphand instead. Kerensky
was in power in Russia at the time and the Russian front was
wobbling. It v/as Helphand who, in return for the Danish
contract, organized the sending to Russia in sealed carriages of
the first Bolshevist leaders, where they were received by
Helphand's agents. The revolution came, and with it the whole
Russian front dissolved, but Germany was robbed of her main
reward by the incompetent intervention of the High Command
under General Hoffmann. Brest-Litovsk followed. It was a
fiasco for Germany and a brilliant victory for Trotsky.

After the signing of the Armistice Count Rantzau became
Germany's Foreign Minister, and as such he directed the peace
negotiations from Germany’s side. His relations and those of
the Rathenaus with Russia made it possible to establish very
close relations between the two countries, and as a result many
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

of Germany’s military secrets went to Russia together with
important General-Staff organization, German officers and
aeroplane and submarine experts. A submarine yard was soon
established at Odessa and a number of military aerodromes
were equipped with the latest German aviation material.
Innumerable German officers were seconded to the Russian
Red Army as instructors and they greatly helped in its re-
organization under Trotsky’s leadership. I have reason to
believe that the Inter- Allied Commission was well aware of this
German military migration to Russia, but there was little or
nothing to be done about it and so, I suppose, a blind eye was
turned to it.

Rantzau was never prepared to say what he would really do
if in his opinion the Peace Treaty proved too onerous, but as
a political move he permitted it to be whispered around that in
such an event he would refuse to sign. The man who crossed
his path at this point was Erzberger, who believed that if
Germany refused to sign the French would march in and
separate North and South Germany. He was no more anxious
to accept an onerous treaty than Rantzau was, but he was very
anxious not to give the French an opportunity to march, and
he believed that the great thing was to gain time. In his
opinion Germany should sign the treaty whatever its terms, and
rely on the subsequent break-up of Allied solidarity. He felt
that in a war-weary Europe it would be impossible for the Allied
Powers to agree on joint action against a defaulting Germany,
and that none of them, not even France, would be prepared to
take the onus of action. To force through his own policy
therefore and counter Rantzau’s moves Erzberger let it be heard
loudly and insistently that whatever the conditions the German
National Assembly in Weimar would vote in favour of signa-
ture.

I was on very friendly terms with both Rantzau and Erz-
berger, and what they said about each other to me is unprint-
able. Each relied on my telling the other, but I kept my own
counsel. In any case, the Centre (Catholic) Party and the
Social Democrats decided to support Erzberger, and that gave
him a clear majority in the National Assembly. Once the die
was cast there was nothing for Rantzau to do but resign, which

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

he did, leaving it to the Social Democrat Hermann Mueller
to sign the Treaty in the name of the German people.

Incidentally Hermann Mueller was very definitely one of the
better elements in the Social Democratic Party. A man of
considerable education and knowledge and of a very refreshing
modesty, he came from the trade-union movement, and he
was one of the very few Social Democrats who did not lose their
heads and become contemptible once they rose to position and
power.

Count Rantzau took the post of Ambassador to Moscow and
retained it until his death. He was already a sick man, and his
state of health frequently made it necessary for him to return
to Berlin for treatment and consultation, so that I continued to
see quite a lot of him. It was largely due to his influence that
the propaganda of the Communist International, which had
begun with great vehemence whilst Joffe was Soviet Ambassador
in Berlin, was damped down. The Embassy was, of course,
extra-territorial, and it was very difficult to prove that it was
the centre of this propaganda, but the German authorities
knew very well that such was the case. Big packing-cases
addressed to the Embassy were constantly arriving from Moscow,
and the German police strongly suspected that they contained
the printed propaganda which was flooding Germany at the
time. They had resort to a trick. A little accident took place
during the unloading at the Friedrichstrasse goods station.
Whilst several such heavy cases were being taken up in the
hoist “something went wrong with the works’’ and the cases
crashed to the ground and split open — and there were the
incriminating pamphlets in great numbers.

After that Joffe was sent off to China to continue his activities
there, and his place in Berlin was taken by Krestinsky, whose
final fate was the executioner’s bullet. Until Krestinsky and his
wife arrived the Soviet Embassy in Unter den Linden had been
very demonstratively proletarian, but after that the famous
receptions began. Not that Krestinsky’s social personality was a
particularly attractive one, I never saw him laugh, and I never
heard of anyone who did. His face was expressionless and there
was something of the Mongol in his appearance. He would
talk if necessary, but never freely. He was no social charmer,
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

but he certainly was a capable Ambassador, and with the
assistance of his wife, who had been a children’s doctor in
Russia, his monthly receptions were made highly interesting
and amusing for the guests, and, at the same time, very useful
politically for the hosts. Every important Soviet representative
arriving from Moscow was introduced at these receptions to
political, military and social circles — ''mutual sniffing”, Bis-
marck used to call the process.

In the beginning "patriotic” circles felt it incumbent on
them to boycott the Soviet Embassy, but Rantzau’s influence
altered that. In addition, the Russians were clever and liberal
hosts. They knew that caviare, vodka and the famous zakuska
would prove great attractions to the famished Germans, and so
there was caviare in mountains, vodka in streams, and zakuska
in huge piles at these evenings. High military officers, civil
servants from the Foreign Office and other Ministries, and
many important people of all sorts regularly attended these
receptions. For a long time the Social Democratic leaders
kept away, but in the end they came too. I was always im-
pressed at these receptions by the real dignity of the Russians
and the lack of it usually shown by their German Social
Democratic colleagues. The receptions were certainly of great
value to the Russians, The general atmosphere and the un-
limited supplies of vodka and wine loosed the tongues of the
German guests. The Russians could get information on
whatever subject they were interested in, but it was utterly
impossible to get anything out of them apart from polite
generalities.

The atmosphere at these receptions was always very agree-
able and very informal, and there was nothing of the usual
starchiness of official functions. No one was bored. It was a
social occasion on which people of many political viewpoints
agreed to let their differences rest for a few pleasant hours
whilst they made the acquaintance of something new, some-
thing perhaps with which they disagreed, but in which they
were nevertheless keenly interested. "Everyone” was there.
There were prominent captains of industry, and at their elbows
German Communists. There were foreign attaches, musicians
and artists, authors, inventors, doctors, Berlin society women,

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and occasionally one of Gorki’s former loves, who seldom
proved averse from a little sarcasm at his expense. And then, of
course, there was caviare, caviare in viscous streams like
molten lava.

Not all the guests, it is true, were prepared to admit it, but
consciously or unconsciously they all went away I am sure with
the feeling that despite the contradictions, paradoxes, and
strangeness, they had come face to face with something new,
something important and something very big.

CHAPTER XI

A HERREMABEND

X HE SO-CALLED Hemnabend was very popular in Germany. I
believe that the adjective Herren or gentlemen has given rise to
a certain amount of misunderstanding as to the nature of these
informal social functions. The word Herren is not used here in
the arrogant sense in which we meet it in Herren-Klub^ i.e.,
“Gentlemen”, who think it necessary to stress the fact, as
distinct from the lower orders and other riff-raff. The Herren-
abend in Berlin merely meant that the host invited gentlemen
exclusively without their ladies — a “Stag Party”, in other words.

The general interest in Russia, which in those days was quite
as lively in Berlin as it is to-day in the rest of the world, was the
reason for the stag party to which I invited the diplomat Count
Rantzau, who happened to be in town at the time; two
scientists and Nobel Prize winners, Albert Einstein and Fritz
Haber; two musicians, Fritz Kreisler and Arthur Schnabel;
two painters. Max Slevogt and Emil Orlik; and an old Russian
friend of mine, Josef Gruenberg, known affectionately to his
friends as “Bolshie”, an orthodontist and iconographer, and a
real expert on Russian affairs.

At that time Arthur Schnabel was just entering on what has
been described as the second period of his art, the Beethoven
period, the apotheosis of his artistic career as an interpreter of
great piano music. Good living and physical well-being played
a great role in his life, but his heart was also devoted to the idea
of social justice. I see no contradiction there myself, but some
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people liked to think there was, and he was known therefore as
a “Salon bolshevist’’.

The guests at my Henenabend were thus a fruitful combination
of political and scientific knowledge and artistic feeling and
intuition. In my experience the analytical inductive or
deductive method will often go wrong in complex questions,
and the intuitive grasp of the artist is useful as a compensatory
and corrective factor. All my guests were known to each
other and on friendly and even familiar terms, so that the talk
was frank and informal. At this distance of time it is, of course,
impossible to recall all the details of our discussion, but one
thing remains firmly in my mind : the unanimity of our opinion
that the tremendous Russian experiment deserved approval
and encouragement. Each of my guests was a man of wide
experience, capable of expressing a valuable and interesting
opinion on the struggle between the idealistic conception which
had arisen in the east and the materialistic conception which
still prevailed in the west.

Count Rantzau was a really exceptional personality. At
first I felt inclined to compare him with the protagonist of
Stevenson’s famous story “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, but that
would give a wrong impression. There was really nothing of
Hyde about Rantzau. The real split, if such I can call it, in
his personality was on a different level. Perhaps I could use the
Greek polarity better and speak of Apollo and Dionysius, the
two distinct tendencies which played such an important role
in their art. Rantzau might have been termed Apolyonistic by
day and Dionystic by night. As the hour grew later he became
more and more alive, his brain more and more active, and his
conversation more and more scintillating. By day he was a
shadow of the man one could know at night. He was a great
connoisseur of wine, and as all men of good taste know, if there
is one thing which gives as much pleasure as drinking really
good wine, it is the giving of it to others who appreciate it. I
always reserved my stock of 1884 Johannisberger Schlossabzug for
Rantzau. After the revolution at the end of the first world
war it was given to me by Princess Melanie Metternich as a
signal mark of friendship and esteem.

Schloss Johannisberg, on the Rhine, was originally the

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property of the Emperor of Austria. After the Vienna Congress
he presented it in fief to his perhaps all-too-loyal servant
Metternich with the proviso that lo per cent of the yield should
go each year to the Imperial cellars. When the Austro-
Hungarian monarchy ceased to exist a dispute arose as to who
should now be entitled to this royal impost. It is a long story
and out of place here^ but thanks to Princess Metternich the
wine ended in my cellar. I remember Rantzau’s enthusiasm
the first time he tasted it. ^‘If Rhine wine is the king of wines,”
he declared, ‘‘then Johannisberger Schlossabzug is the King of
Kings.” Fortunately this opinion was not expressed on the
evening in question or we should probably have spent the rest
of it listening to a duel between Max Slevogt and Rantzau over
the respective merits of Rhine wine and that of the Palatinate.
The inhabitants of the Palatinate feel deeply on the subject and
they are prepared to go to the stake at any moment in support
of their contention that the wines of the Palatinate have it. As
well as being an artist, Slevogt was also a vintner and owned a
vineyard in Neu Kastell in the County Palatine.

On this particular evening Rantzau was Dionystic par
excellence^ thanks no doubt largely to the “King of Kings”. His
eyes sparkled and he spoke fluently and brilliantly. Fritz Haber
was sitting opposite him and drinking ten times as much, no,
twenty times as much as the aristocratic gourmety and still
remaining absolutely sober. It was no besottedness that made
the Nobel Prizeman drink like a fish. He had to take tremendous
quantities of liquid to remain alive, and he was already a
doomed man. Whisky and soda was not a mere means of
pleasure to him. He was literally drinking to stave off death.

My guests were unanimous in believing that, after all
allowances had been made, Soviet Russia was working for an
ideal against the capitalist materialism whose chief represent-
ative, even at that time, was the United States. Europe lay
between the two, under pressure from each side. One day she
would have to decide for one or the other, or be crushed between
the two. We were all of the opinion that in the last resort the
principle represented by Russia would offer humanity a better
chance of happiness than any society built on a material basis
possibly could do.

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Rantzau’s aim — he regarded it as his mission in life — ^was to
bring about the closest possible friendship between Germany
and Russia. He was a German, and therefore he thought
Germany was entitled to the hegemony in this alliance, but
nevertheless, his fundamental motive was not nationalistic, but
idealistic, European. The main opposition to his efforts, the
opposition, in fact, which brought his whole work to nothing,
was in the Wilhelmstrasse, v/here a powerful clique, the
Bonner-Borussians, would have none of it. Stresemann signed
the deplorable Locarno Treaty, and everything Rantzau had
laboured to build up was swept away.

On the evening in question Rantzau sketched the whole
extent of the damage to us. ‘‘'The real object of my return is to
tell them what blockheads they are,” he declared. “There’s
nothing more I can do now.” He knew Russia thoroughly, and
he liked and respected the Russian people. Outward semblance
did not deceive him, and he could see the tremendous progress
the Russians were making in the teeth of enormous difficulties.
He had worked patiently and systematically to realize his plans,
and on the Russian side he had found a congenial spirit and
partner in the Soviet Foreign Commissar, Tchitcherin, and the
two had become fast friends. Rantzau was convinced of the
essential honesty of the Russians, and he never let slip an
opportunity of defending them. Someone made a scepticed
remark about their political and economic reliability. Rantzau
almost sprang up from his seat. He was obviously moved by
honest indignation. “Give me one instance,” he demanded,
“one instance only, that could remotely justify such calumny.”
No one could.

Rantzau discussed the financial and commercial reliability
of the Russians at some length. Although they were being
asked for as much as 30 per cent interest on secured debt they
had never in a single instance, however small, defaulted on
any of their obligations. He prophesied grimly the terrible
consequences such wretched calumny and such perfidious
attempts to undermine Russia’s credit must one day have for
Europe, Rantzau knew better than anyone the steadily
accumulating bitterness in Russia, and he feared that one day
it would be let loose in an avalanche of resentment. He

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

described in dramatic words the deliberate humiliations to
which the Soviet Republic was being subjected. The Russians
were cool enough and clever enough to swallow the insults, but
it was only in the firm conviction that one day their time would
come. They were prepared to sign any agreement, he declared,
no matter how disreputable and sharp were the motives of their
partners, provided only that it promised to help their cause in
some way or the other. The Russians were quite as well aware
of all the swindling tricks which were being played on them as
were the perpetrators themselves.

Rantzau knew that his policy was finished. It appeared that
after Locarno the German Government had been anxious to
offer a pact of friendship to the Russians as some sort of
compensation. Such patent dishonesty went against Rantzau’s
grain, and, in any case, the whole policy of the Bonner-
Borussian clique and its mouthpiece Stresemann was odious
to him, and he made no secret of the fact to the Russians. The
last remnants of confidence the Russians may have had in
Germany’s honesty disappeared with the signing of the
Locarno Treaty, and gradually Russia’s attitude towards
Germany developed into one of suspicion and mistrust. Out-
wardly nothing happened at first. German teachers, instructors
and foremen remained in Russia ; German inventions, German
machinery and German finished and semi-finished goods were
still bought and paid for. There was no intention on Russia’s
part of breaking immediately with a willing and anxious
supplier. But German influence was more and more reduced,
and when the time appeared to have come to put the finishing
touches to the process, Russia was cleansed of Germanophile
elements with utter ruthlessness and brutality. If one scans the
list of victims of the purge they can all be brought under the
same general denominator : pro-German outlook.

Rantzau was much too sensitive not to be moved by the mass
misery that a fundamental social upheaval always brings with
it, and his sympathy with the victims was genuine and his
indignation generous, but he was far too intelligent to let this
sentiment interfere with his admiration of the great work as a
whole.

It grew late. Rantzau had emptied his heart. There was
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

something fascinating and compelling in the frankness and
deep feeling with which he presented his case. Both Einstein
and Haber in particular had taken a very active part in the
discussion. All of us, both scientists and artists, had learnt
much from Rantzau. We felt convinced that the world need
not fear Bolshevism, and that in the last resort good would
come of it.

It was early morning when we parted, each with the con-
viction that the world was approaching the greatest revolu-
tionary struggles of all times. We have since experienced the
first act of the great drama.

CHAPTER XII

THE INFLATION

Reich’s Chancellor Luther was a real caricature demo-
crat. We had so many of them. I am not in a position to pass
judgment on his financial abilities. In his own opinion he
was a finance genius. I think he was the first man from
North Germany to enter a post-revolutionary Cabinet. The
plump little man with the fat, featureless face never looked
straight at anyone ; he always seemed to be looking for some-
thing he feared he had dropped. He was reminiscent of a
village pastor or school teacher who had somehow found his
way to town and felt a little lost. In appearance he was the
honest but dull lower-middle-class German to perfection. His
clothes were always extremely practical and seemed calculated
to last for ever: a flannel shirt to save washing; sometimes a
white dicky over it; a celluloid collar, washable; celluloid
cuffs, ditto ; a loose ill-fitting suit of some extremely durable
material; hand-knitted socks, probably made by his good
wife ; and ploughman’s boots with very thick soles. Attired in
this solid garb Luther climbed to the highest office in the
German Republic. He was an honest, solid and reliable man,
and his soul must have been very much like his clothes, as proof
against corruption as his heavy boots were against water. His
period of office was the most difficult any German Chancellor
ever experienced ; it coincided with the inflation.

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JdnoSy The Story of a Doctor

The inflation period in Germany has been described again
and again from almost every point of view, but still I think it
impossible for anyone to have a true realization of its meaning
unless he actually lived through it. It is in such a period that a
man realizes the folly of money and the sound value of goods.
Money is suddenly seen as nothing but a fiction, a convenient
means of exchange, an outward expression of confidence in the
honesty of those who guarantee it. This is not the place for a
finance-technical analysis of the causes of the German inflation
and, in any case, I am not the man to give it, but technical
details to one side, patriotic malice played a great role in the
background : the desire to upset the reparations plans of the
victors and rid Germany of her burden of foreign indebtedness.
No wonder the value of the mark dropped into the bottomless
pit. A billion marks for one dollar — and even then the owner
of the dollar would have been well advised to keep it in his
pocket. The situation was complicated by senility at the
Reichsbank, whose President, Arthur Gv/inner, certainly a
capable man in his day, had reached the ripe old age of
seventy-five. The mark had always been a mark for him,
something of value, and he couldn’t get used to the idea that
the idols of his youth had toppled over. Behind him were men
who knew very well what they were doing. They exploited
the last vestiges of foreign confidence in Germany, the naive
belief that Germany really couldn’t break down altogether.
Right up to the last foreign money was being speculatively
invested in Germany to disappear with all the rest.

Psychologically the inflation riot was extraordinarily interest-
ing, and it was a long time before people realized that the
grandiose figures which betokened their wealth meant just
nothing. It was not until the deflation that many noticed for
the first time that they had lost everything. In consequence the
deflation made them dissatisfied and unhappy. The German
middle classes were ruined. First they lost their money in war
loans, and then the inflation swallowed the rest. After that
mass unemployment prevented recovery despite all their
persistence and industry. They were the predestined victims of
Hitler’s propaganda. For the inferior mind faced with diffi-
culties any sort of change seems welcome. ‘T want to change
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

myself/’ says the servant girl as sole explanation for giving
notice to end her employment. The despairing German middle
class wanted to change itself, and it was prepared to follow any
leadership blindly provided only that there was some hope of a
change.

At last the inflation ended. The miracle of the so-called
Rentenmark brought Germany back to financial stability.
How? I don’t think anyone quite knows. It really was a
miracle, a psychological miracle. There was nothing real
behind it. It always reminded me forcibly of the Rabbi preach-
ing to his pupils in the seminary about the wonders of Divine
Providence. To give them an illustration he told them the
story of Mordecai, who found a suckling abandoned on the
street and crying for food. In despair Mordecai prayed to
God for help and God was moved. A miracle happened and
Mordecai’s breasts swelled with milk so that he could feed the
foundling (incidentally, this child was Esther, the saviour of the
Jewish people). But one pupil found God’s methods a bit
cumbrous; why did he go to all that trouble when he could
have given Mordecai money with which to hire a wet nurse?
But the Rabbi wagged his head reproachfully. It was the sin of
pride to doubt the wisdom of God. ^'And,” he concluded
triumphantly, ^'so long as God can settle matters with a miracle
why should he waste money?”

The miracle of the Rentenmark was inspired by my friend
and colleague Hilferding, formerly a panel doctor in Vienna
and later Finance Minister of the German Reich. It was put
into operation under Luther’s Chancellorship. The basis of
the new mark was a fictitious pooling of the national wealth.
Every man of property had to accept a nominal mortgage of
5 per cent on his property for the good of the State. That was
the guarantee, or shall we say the content of the new money.
The period of recovery set in supported by surplus foreign
money which streamed into the country with speculative intent
and at cut-throat rates of interest. A tremendous boom quickly
developed, prosperity returned and the Nazi movement went
right under and was almost forgotten. It was saved from final
dissolution and extinction by the world economic crisis which
began in 1929 and brought mass unemployment with it.

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

During the four years it lasted the Nazi party succeeded in
gaining power.

To my good fortune I was one of those who foresaw the way
things were going and I held fast to my own convictions. The
result was that I and many of my friends managed to weather
both the storms of inflation and the doldrums of deflation with-
out any very considerable loss. Not that it was at all pleasant
whilst it lasted. I think if a vote were taken to discover the most
memorable experience of the German people in the first war
and post-war period, it would prove to have been the inflation.
Before the new higher denomination notes were printed in
masses, people would go to the bank and fetch their money in
push-carts — and before they could spend it they would often
find that it had fallen so swiftly in purchasing power that they
could hardly buy their daily bread with it. Even small firms
were desperately advertising for '‘Book-keepers, strong on
noughts”. The astronomical figures set a man’s mind in a whirl
and pursued him even into his nightmares.

No financial order or plan was possible in anyone’s life,
and everyone did his best to turn what money he had into
goods. 'The flight into stable values” the process was called.
On the other hand, many people had to realize their possessions
in order to live from day to day. Every morning the Govern-
ment announced the day’s rate, and by the evening everything
had doubled or trebled in price. It was no use reckoning fees
in money; food, etc., was the only practical measure of value.
I was very satisfied if at the end of a hard day’s work I had been
able to get enough bread, butter and milk to keep me, my wife
and our children from going hungry. The estate of Princess
Marie Radziwill owed me a balance of 15,000 marks for
medical fees. The executors paid it, but when they did it was
the price of a postage stamp. On one occasion I undertook a
journey to Munich for a consultation in return for a smoked
ham. Professor Gasper and I carried out a delicate and
difficult operation on an American banker for kidney trouble.
The princely fee the pair of us received for our services amounted
to five dollars. Members of the American Finance Commission
could, and did, give banquets for the equivalent of half-a-
dollar. Anyone who was fortunate enough to find a gold piece
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Science, Politics and Personalities

forgotten from earlier and happier days could buy a small
house with it. Daily the situation became more and more
grotesque. The dam of confidence had collapsed and the
waters of financial disaster swirled over the country, sweeping
away every hold. Until the miracle of the Rentenmark restored
stability.

The general lines of Germany’s internal policy had been laid
down by Erzberger. The new rulers of the Reich had not
courage enough to abolish the constitution of 1871 and introduce
a uniform and centralized Reich’s administration abolishing
the particularist rights of the individual States altogether. As
in so many other important matters, they adopted half measures :
they left the federal States their little parliaments and a
nominal independence. In some respects this was perhaps not
altogether unwise. Oil and water don’t mix. Nor do North
and South Germany, Catholic and Protestant, Silesian
puddings and Swabian pies. Let them have their funny little
ways, their tom-thumb parliaments and their local prides,
thought Erzberger, but in really important matters the frame-
work of the Reich must be strongly carpentered, so he unified
the finances, the army, the post and the diplomatic service —
this last with the very definite idea of a Roman Nunciatur for
the Reich as a whole with a Concordat in the background,
because at that time the Vatican was represented only in
Munich. With these reforms he deprived the States of any
independence which would have proved uncomfortable for the
Reich — but they didn’t discover that until later. It was easy
enough to remodel the broken and defeated army into a
centralized institution, and the postal services and the
diplomatic corps proved no very great difficulty either, but the
finances — that was a different matter.

I was often with Erzberger and the other builders of the
Reich in Weimar, and I certainly assisted them valiantly in
reducing the cellar stocks of the old-established hotel "‘Erb-
prinzen”. The general political level of the whole National
Assembly was very much that of a village council, nevertheless,
on the whole, and thanks to the patience and guidance of a
handful of highly intelligent men like Erzberger and Preuss, it
got through some very sound work. The Weimar Constitution,

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Jdnos, The Story of a Doctor

an admirable document, was the personal work of Hugo
Preuss, an able and intelligent, though outwardly not very
attractive personality.

Almost all the German States were at the end of their
resources and in favour of a formal declaration of State bank-
ruptcy. Erzberger exploited this catastrophic financial situation
in order to deprive the States of financial control (it was the
most powerful weapon they had) and place all financial control
in the hands of the Reich. It was on a Monday, I remember,
and I was in Erzberger’s office when he dismissed a Secretary
of State for declaring that his financial plans were a practical
impossibility. Calling in our joint friend Moesle, he instructed
him to work out the plan in detail by the following Friday so
that finances could go on. As he went out Moesle whispered to
me: '‘Matthias has gone off his rocker. It is impossible.” I
immediately, in my innocence and ignorance of the difficulties,
no doubt, concluded a bet with Moesle that the thing would be
done. Moesle lost his bet. He finished his job in time and the
new Finance Plan providing for a centralized taxation system
and Reich’s control of finances went before the National
Assembly and was adopted.

The reconstruction of the army was placed in the capable
hands of Generals von Seeckt and Groener. Groener was a
Wurtemberger and an expert on railway affairs. On the old
General Staff he had been in charge of mobilization and
deployment. He was a man of medium height, fair-haired, and
with pleasant features. He was a hard worker, and even in
peace time he was accustomed to spend eighteen hours a day
at his desk. He had none of the one-eyed prejudices of the
ordinary professional soldier, and he showed a real grasp of
civilian affairs ; in fact I think I can say he was one of the very
few professional soldiers in Germany who realized that the
army was there for the people, and not the people there for the
benefit of the officers corps. The fundamental idea of this
civilian in uniform was to create a small people’s army. As the
Versailles Treaty insisted that it should be no more than a
hundred-thousand strong, his aim was to recruit on the basis
of capacity and intelligence rather than mere physical
condition. He was not one of the "vons” ; he came of a good
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

Swabian middle-class family, and he did not choose his
collaborators according to the handle on their names, and that
was all to the good.

But the War Minister of the Weimar Republic was Noske,
a former sergeant-major and a grossly subaltern nature. With
the willing assistance of this precious Social Democrat all sorts
of organizations with all sorts of deceptive titles arose in which
the old professional officers worked to keep the imperial army
in being. Cadaver discipline was ingrained in Noske, and even
as War Minister he stood to attention with the thumbs at the
seam of his trousers when addressing his former superiors. He
was the willing and criminal tool of the officer caste and he
carried out the instructions of the General Staff, which
continued to exist in secret in defiance of the Peace Treaty.

General von Seeckt was another highly intelligent man with
thoroughly modern ideas. In 1922 he told me that he kept two
men in each company whose task it wa's to report regularly on
the spirit and opinions of the men. It was he who introduced
university courses for officers, choosing the University of
Giessen for this purpose. He was a believer in individual
capacity rather than numbers. For this reason he abolished
the major part of the old Army Rules and Regulations and put
the training of the Reichswehr on an entirely new basis. He was
the father of German Army mechanization. In the very early
days the tank played a big part in his theories and at the
Reichswehr manoeuvres at Doeberitz and Jueterbog dismantled
old cars were turned into imitation tanks. The fools laughed,
but von Seeckt knew what he was doing.

In his spare time he was an amateur of the arts and a man
of charming personality. He was unprejudiced and open to
consider any new idea or listen to any piece of advice. He was
a gentleman of culture and wide education, very much
attracted to the theatre, on which subject he had very definite
views. Reinhardt was his personal friend, and so were many
other dramatists and authors, including Gerhart Hauptmann.
He moved freely in such circles and obviously felt loimself
thoroughly at home. His gaunt figure and lean monocled face
were familiar sights in artistic circles, where his amiable, even
jovial, nature made him very well liked.

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The work of the Inter- Allied Control Commission had never
been performed very efficiently and before long it began to
grow more and more perfunctory. No one made any attempt
to check the personnel figures of the Reichswehr to see that they
did not exceed the treaty limits. The soldiery could go about
their business again without let or hindrance, and the head-
quarters of the General Staff, the ‘‘big red building” in the
Alsenstrasse, and the building of the War Ministry in the
Bendlerstrasse, resumed their old functions in aJ but name. The
old feudal names appeared again in the official Army Lists, and
military experts of all kinds fell over each other in their
corridors. The civilian Ministries ruled nominally, but in
reality it was the military, and they looked down in arrogant
contempt on the civilian democracy because the civilian
democracy looked up to the feudal military caste with servile
adoration. The military took the gifts and despised the
givers.

Much the same development was taking place in the Foreign
Office. Under the Kaiser there was a minor Consular official
named Edmund Schueler. He was a young man of talent and
ability and an expert on Near Eastern affairs, but he was also
the son of a simple artillery general in Spandau, a member of
the middle class and not one of the old feudal aristocracy, and
therefore promotion was very slow. He lodged many proposals
and constructive reports, but the only time they ever received
any notice was when they dealt with architectural matters,
which the “vons” apparently and quite rightly felt were not in
their line. Even under the Kaiser therefore Schueler succeeded
in securing a commission for the brilliant architect Peter
Behrens to rebuild the German Embassy in Petersburg.
Behrens was a man of imagination and ability, though his
fertile ideas did not always stand the test of time. Still, as far as
the German Embassy in Leningrad (as it afterwards became) is
concerned, I have always felt that its simple lines, well-pro-
portioned fagade and imposing granite columns made a very
fine ensemble. To-day it still seems modern, though we have
in the meantime got used to the new genre it represents.
However, thirty years ago it was positively revolutionary, all
the more so because the neighbourhood of the Cathedral of
i6o

Science^ Politics and Personalities

St Paul meant a certain disharmony in the whole square, and
the new building gave offence to many old-fashioned purists.

During the first world war Schueler was sent to Turkey in
some subordinate capacity, where he spent a deal of the time
on his back with paratyphus. After the revolution democratic
eyes began to look round for a bourgeois diplomat who was not
a member of any of the duelling corps such as the Bonner-
Borussians, and its countless imitators. They fell on Schueler,
and he was immediately promoted to high office and entrusted
with the reorganization of the whole Foreign Office. It was
there I made his acquaintance through Peter Behrens.

Schueler was no doubt influenced by the bitter remembrance
of his own frustrated ability as a little Consul, whose way up
was barred by the inert mass of privilege, title and order-
holders. With vigour and determination, and no doubt much
pleasure, he set to work to unify the whole Diplomatic Service.
Under the republic the post of Ambassador or Minister was no
longer to be an aristocratic and feudal privilege. It was to be
open to anyone with the capacity to fill it, no matter what
his origin. In principle of course Schueler was quite right.
Germany’s diplomatic representatives were no longer to be
merely clever intriguers and social lions (in pre-telegraph and
pre-telephone days there was, no doubt, a certain justification
for this), but thoroughly capable men who could at the same
time (as a concession to the spirit of the day) further commercial
relations between their own country and that to which they
were accredited. Thanks to the new political constellation in
Europe the days of mere intrigues and the careful sifting of
Court rumours were dead, but their representatives were not
yet buried.

Schueler was right in theory, but the theory went wrong in
practice because his ambassadors, etc., were chosen primarily
for their commercial ability (which, unfortunately, most of
them proved not to possess) and not for their general suitability.
The first set of democratic representatives sent out into the
world by the republic were almost all failures. They were men
of inadequate social forms, with little or no knowledge of
languages and a hopeless ignorance of the character and
history of the peoples to whom they had been sent. Even that

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

would not have been so bad if only they had been able to make
up for it by sheer intelligence, but that was rarely the case.
They did not even do much to further Germany’s commercial
relations — the very thing for which they had been chosen —
because they usually favoured the particular branch of trade,
industry, or whatever it was, in which they themselves had
formerly been active and with which, no doubt, they still
maintained connections. In short, they seemed to imagine that
they were commercial travellers rather than ambassadors.
This I know is a harsh judgment, but I have a number of living
examples before my mind’s eye as I write.

In the circumstances the old powers in Germany found it
easy to turn back the clock when opportunity arose, and the
first man to go was the inaugurator of the whole democratic
course, Schueler himself. Immediately after Ebert’s sudden
death Simon, the President of the Reich’s Court, upon whom,
by the terms of the Constitution, the duties and powers of the
Reich’s President devolved until the election of the new Presi-
dent, dismissed Schueler. He went unwillingly, but he had to
go, and as a private man he turned to his old love, architecture.

Thus the German Foreign Office was reconquered by the
Bonner-Borussians and the von Dircksen family and became
once again a bulwark of nationalistic aristocracy and Prussian
Junkerdom. Of coxirse, the German Diplomatic Corps had
capable, honest, intelligent and even far-sighted men in its
ranks, many of whom were opposed to Hitlerism, but un-
fortunately they kept their opposition safely locked up in their
own breasts. The diplomatic family which perhaps did most to
corrode and destroy the decent traditions of Germany was the
von Dircksens. They were actively pro-Hitler, and one of the
female von Dircksens not only supported Hitler financially but
was the first to introduce the man into polite society, a social
triumph which he would have found it impossible to achieve
on his own. When he came to power Hitler generously repaid
the help he had received from the von Dircksens by giving them
and all their relations, both near and far, high and influential
positions in his new Reich.

There were other diplomats in Germany. There was, for
instance, Carl von Schubert, one-time Ambassador in Rome.

Science^ Politics and Personalities

He was a very good friend of mine. Whilst Foreign Secretary
he, was far-sighted enough to see the threatening dangers and
he did his best to promote a policy of peace with Germany’s
neighbours, but he and the few others like him were not
influential enough, and with the arrival of Hitler and the
wretched Ribbentrop all such honest endeavours came to an
end.

Unfortunately there were not many deserving of praise ; not
many even to whom one could grant extenuating circumstances
in palliation of their offence. There was Stohrer, a man of
considerable formal culture, who used it to ingratiate himself
with Hitler and to further the Nazi cause as Ambassador to
Spain. The jurist von Gauss was another disappointment. A
man of some culture and ability in his own right, as grandson
of the great astronomer and mathematician Gauss, he should
have felt the obligations of his position. He has not the excuse
that he believed for one moment in Hitler’s racial nonsense,
or, indeed, in any of the evil and ridiculous Nazi rubbish,
but that did not prevent his using his juristic abilities to cloak
Hitler’s crimes with a pseudo-legality. An altogether deplorable
case of intellectual dishonesty and disloyalty to a high tradition.

CHAPTER XIII

JOURNALISM IN GERMANY

Xhere were three main newspaper concerns in post-
revolutionary Germany ; Rudolf Mosse, whose chief paper was
the Berliner Tageblatt; Ullstein with the Vossiscke ^eitung;
and Simon-Sonnemann with the world-famous Frankfurter
Z^itmg, They were all worthy representatives of the liberal-
democratic tradition. The other big national newspapers, such
as the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger of the Scherl House, the Kreuz-
zeitung and the • Taeglicke Rundschau, declined greatly in
importance after the revolution. The same was true of the big
provincial newspapers (apart from the Frankfurter such

as the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, the Koelnische Z^dung and the
Koenigsberger AUgemeine Z^dung. On the whole the German press

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

was well established and reputable, and its reporting was
reliable and as objective as could be expected.

The period of corruption set in when the Nationalist Hugen-
berg bought up most of the provincial dailies with millions of
his own money and many millions more put forward by Right-
wing political interests. With this the House of Scherl (Hugen-
berg) again became powerful, but its organs were no longer
newspapers in the formerly accepted sense, but mere instru-
ments of nationalistic and monarchistic propaganda,

I was personally in close touch with the three big liberal
democratic dailies ; with the Berliner Tageblatt by my friendship
with its editor, Theodor Wolff; with the Vossische Zeitmg
through my friendship with Georg Bernhard, its editor; and
with the Frankfurter ^eitung through my close relations with the
family which owned it, Simon-Sonnemann. Theodor Wolff was
what we liked to call an Athenian in cultural outlook and
education, and a Spartan, almost a Stoic, in character. He was
a man of middle height with silver hair, pink cheeks, a
clipped moustache over a sceptical, friendly mouth from which
a lighted cigarette invariably hung. He was always calm, and I
never knew him otherwise even when everyone around him was
showing obvious signs of excitement, even panic, in the many
crises Germany experienced in those post-war years. He was
highly intelligent, judicially critical, unprejudiced, and a man
of great understanding and cool judgment. His leading articles
were more than day-to-day journalism — though they were
brilliant enough examples of that — they were of a high literary
and cultural standard. He was the foremost Advocatus Democratm
of the Weimar Republic. Liberal democratic principles were
laws of the Medes and Persians for him, and he would not
budge one iota from them himself or countenance any com-
promise in others. I have more than once expressed my
opinion that in the situation which arose in the Weimar
Republic this noble dogmatism was a mistake. In the case of
Theodor Wolff I can say to-day that it xost the House of
Rudolf Mosse its existence — ^and democratic Germany her life.
Et sifractus illabatur Orbis, impavidumferient ruirue. In the end his
thoroughly justified dislike of von Papen was probably in effect
and unconsciously a help for Hitler.

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

WolfF was more than the nominal chief of the Berliner
Tageblatty he controlled its policy without interference. His
colleagues were amongst the finest journalists in Germany.
With only one exception (pilloried forcibly by Heinrich Mann)
they remained anti-Nazi even at a time when so many in
Germany were hurriedly changing their coats. Wolff's one
failing (politically, be it understood) was originally a virtue ; it
was that orthodox and upright democracy which judged the
world according to its own fundamental decency. As one can
readily see, where Weimar Germany was concerned it was a
grievous political error. Wolff was a firm pacifist and whole-
heartedly in favour of a peaceable understanding with
Germany’s neighbours, and with France in particular. He was
no cunning and hard-boiled politician, but a man of refinement
and culture, more inclined to trust than mistrust.

I often discussed the Nazi danger with him. He could never
believe that it really was a menace. He firmly believed in
Germany, his Germany, and he was sure that decency would
triumph in the end. Even when I met him, as I sometimes did,
in exile, he was still not prepared to admit that the German
people as a whole were with Hitler. For him the crime had been
committed by a handful of reckless and ruthless blackguards.
There was more than a little of the Egmont in his nature.

The House of Rudolf Mosse gave Theodor Wolff a completely
free hand, but Georg Bernhard’s position on the Vossiscke
Z^itung was very different. There were five brother Ullsteins,
and no editorial conference at the Vossische was complete
without at least one of them to keep Bernhard in check. Georg
Bernhard was a good journalist and he too was a convinced
democrat who fought for democracy in Germany and peace in
the world. I should say that Bernhard was even more an
economist than he was a journalist, and he was one of the first
to recognize the danger of Germany’s economic ruin through
Nazism, whose tenets were propagated both by the party Nazi
Feder and by the Nazi tool Schacht, who was then President of
the Reichsbank. Bernhard fought the Nazis to the utmost and
he was wholeheartedly hated by them, and in particular by
Goebbels.

On one occasion he met Goebbels in the foyer of the Reich-

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

stag, and in the hearing of a whole crowd of people he asked him
how on earth a man who looked so much like a Jewish film
actor could be such a fanatical anti-Semite. Goebbels was not
usually at a loss for words, but that floored him. From that
moment he hated Bernhard with a fierce and personal hatred,
and it would have gone hard with Bernhard had he ever fallen
into Nazi hands. When the Nazis came to power he had to fly
for his life. I hid him in my sanatorium under a false name
until arrangements could be made to smuggle him in the dead
of night over the frontier into Czechoslovakia.

The brilliant paladin of liberal democracy in South Germany
was the Frankfurter ^eitung^ founded by Leopold Sonnemann in
the middle of the nineteenth century. The democratic Koenigs^
berger Allgemeine had been founded by and still belonged

to the Simons family. The only daughter of Sonnemann
married the only son of Simons, and after the death of the
parents the two newspapers were in the same hands. By far the
more important of the two was, of course, the Frankfurter
Zeitung^ which was directed by Heinz Simon, himself a highly
cultured man greatly attached to the arts, which he did very
much to further in South Germany, in particular music. The
newspaper was, as everyone knows, of the very highest standing.
Its editors, foreign correspondents and contributors were
absolutely first class and the paper enjoyed an almost unique
international reputation. However, like so many other excellent
newspapers, it was unable to maintain its independence
entirely in the days of large-scale capital and big financial and
industrial interests. The Frankfurter Z^itung slid into the orbit of
large-scale industry and the I.G. Farben concern, the great
German dye trust, in particular. That was really the beginning
of the end for the staunch old democratic daily, and when the
Nazis came to power it finally surrendered to them. Its editor,
Kircher, at one time a reputable champion of democracy, went
over to the enemy, and from then on the paper became a tool of
the Nazi regime,

I have been discussing primarily the democratic liberal press,
but, of course, a newspaper like the Social Democratic Vorwmts
also served the democratic cause in the wider sense of that term.
The Vorwarts^ like its fellow Social Democratic organs in the

i66

Science^ Politics and Personalities

provinces, was most efficiently edited and produced, and it
differed from the great democratic dailies proper in perhaps two
main respects : the mass of its readers consisted of working men
rather than middle-class intellectuals, and, partly in con-
sequence, no doubt, its literary level was not so high, though it
was by no means negligible. Politically its language was much
franker, and more was said than the liberal press thought
advisable, but, in my opinion, still not enough.

The Communist Rote Fahne and the near-Communist Welt
am Abend (it was really a camouflaged Communist paper) spoke
a very drastic language ; not that it affected the end result. The
Welt am Abends an evening paper, as its name signifies, was quite
a brilliant journalistic performance. It was thoroughly modern,
well presented and well edited. It had an undeniable hang to
sensation, but it was so well done that it counted both the
simpler souls and their more sophisticated brethren amongst its
many readers.

The main Nazi organ was the Voelkischer Beobachter^ Hitler’s
mouthpiece, and its cloacal nature assured it a large circulation
amongst the nationalistic German middle class as soon as it was
founded. Together with the Berliner Angriff, Goebbels’ personal
organ, this journal prepared the terrorist atmosphere for years
before the Nazis came to power. That such thoroughly vile
papers could find an increasingly large circulation was an
indication of how far the general degeneration of moral
standards had gone in Germany. Once in power, the Nazis
destroyed German journalism and dissipated the last vestiges of
its international reputation by a combination of monopoly,
thorough-going perfidy and sheer incompetence.

The standard of pre-Nazi journalism was high from almost
every point of view. Naturally, the papers regarded their main
task as that of informing the public, primarily and necessarily
politically, but they also aimed (at least the reputable news-
papers, of which there were many, did) at educating the public
in the things of the mind, in art and in science ; and they did it
very successfully. Their contributors were outstanding in every
field. Prominent artists and scholars contributed regularly
without fear of being reproached with rushing into print for
publicity purposes. Far from opposing such co-operation, the

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

scientific and other associations encouraged their members to
take part in what they regarded as^ valuable enlightenment
work to inform the public of new scientific achievements or new
developments in art and interest them in higher things than the
everyday jog-trot. In democratic Germany the good news-
paper was a source of almost every kind of knowledge. Of
course, there were sensational newspapers which cared for
nothing but scandal in one form or the other, but the more
serious public rejected them with contempt. Even newspapers
which catered for the masses of the people were usually of quite
a high literary and cultural standard. In fact one can say that
the general interest in art and science and their representatives
which was alive in Germany in those days redounded greatly
to the credit of the German people. But in the end those who
spoiled so many good things spoiled that too. When they came
to power objective knowledge gave way to nationalistic
prejudice, mystic nonsense and hateful distortion. The German
press ceased to be an instrument for the dissemination of
knowledge and education, and became an instrument of
tendentious brutalization; it no longer served truth, but the
father of lies ; it no longer enlightened, but besotted the minds
of its unfortunate readers.

CHAPTER XIV

PRINCES OF THE CHURCH

It was through my friend and patient Monsignor Teophil
ELlinda, Senior Canon of the Diocese of Gran, that I first came
into contact with the higher Catholic clergy of Hungary. I ,
often visited the seat of the Primate of Hungary and I made
many good friends there. As a Papal prelate^Klinda frequently
journeyed to Rome. On one occasion I went with him and
had an opportunity (of which I took full advantage) of getting
to know many of the leading personalities of the Vatican. Some
of them have died in the meantime, and others have donned the
red hat of the Cardinal. I found my relations with them very
agreeable and by good fortune I have succeeded not only in
maintaining but extending them right down to the present day.

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Science j Politics and Personalities

During my first visit I became friendly with Father Bricarelli,
whom I have already mentioned as being the leader of the
Givilta Cattolica in Rome, a simple Jesuit priest, but a man of
great capacity and influence, and one universally esteemed.
Thanks to his position his relations with the whole College of
Cardinals were of the closest, and through him I was called into
consultation when the aged Cardinal Oreglia di San Stefano
fell ill. I extended my stay and I did not leave Rome until he
had thoroughly recovered. During the whole time I lived in the
Gancellaria and breathed the authentic atmosphere of the
Vatican. To make clear what I mean I can compare it only
with the pure mountain air at great heights, with the horizon
far away in the blue distance above the clouds. Such an
experience is deeply impressive and extraordinarily elevating.
The values in the Vatican were those of eternity. Time was not
of the essence of the problem. If a thing did not succeed one
day, there was the next — or the following year. Time was there
limitlessly, for confidence in final victory was supreme. There
is no power in the world to-day which can trust its strength
more confidently than the Catholic Church. If it is threatened
from one side, new forces fly to its aid from another.

The highest representative of the Catholic Church is His
Holiness the Pope, but real power is in the hands of the College
of Cardinals and its Deacon. The College is, so to speak, the
Papal Cabinet. For this reason the Cardinal Deacon Oreglia
twice refused the Papal election, and in the third vote the
former Patriarch of Venice, Del Sarto, was elected Pope
Pius X. It was certainly not for health reasons alone that
Cardinal Oreglia refused to become the successor of St Peter;
the position he already held was even more powerful.

Here lies, I feel, the solution to the riddle of Catholic
invincibility. In this spiritual democracy everyone may live to
the full limit, but not one step beyond. The limit is represented
by the interests of the Church, and it is laid down strictly
by the College of Cardinals, from whose verdict there is no
appeal. The cleverness of the Church lies primarily in its
ability to adapt itself to the times and the developments they
bring. The Church is not guided by unbending conservatism
or by any supine traditional routine. The higher a priest rises

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

in the hierarchy of the Church the easier it is to discuss the
questions of the day with him. In such discussions there was no
one from whom I learned more than from Oreglia the
Magnificent, a man of supreme wisdom.

I have known a number of people in my life with whom I
could never rid myself of a certain constraint, no matter how
long I knew them or how often I came in contact with them.
It is some aura of personality which prevents one coming too
close to them, and it has nothing to do with respect, position or
power. Amongst such personalities were General LudendorfF,
the assassinated Hungarian Minister-President Count Tisza, the
Kaiserin Zita, and Cardinal Oreglia. Normally after a short
time, and without violating the conventional distance, I have
always recovered my nonchalance. All I had to do was to
remember that the others wanted something from me and not
I something from them. All my life that thought has been
sufficient to maintain my self-possession, and, on the whole, I
have found that my attitude was approved rather than
otherwise.

Cardinal Oreglia had to a very great degree the ‘^aura’* to
which I have referred. The Cancellaria had a very long front,
and when all the doors were open the reception and other rooms
could be seen in one great vista. The Cardinal sat in the last room
of the flight, usually in an arm-chair. He was approaching
ninety then. Looking over the top of his glasses, for he was far-
sighted, he would watch the visitor coming towards him until
finally he arrived. You know already when you enter the
vestibule of a Cardinal whether there is any likelihood of your
being received or not. If his chair is against the wall you will
not be received ; if it is in the centre of the room His Eminence
will see you.

I always felt a little disconcerted when I marched down this
long avenue of rooms. But once I was with His Eminence the
atmosphere changed. Although Cardinal Oreglia certainly had
the ‘^aura” of which I have spoken, he was far from being a
forbidding personality. On the contrary, he was rather jovial —
far more so, in fact, than any of the other Princes of the Church
I have met. He had a tremendous knowledge of human beings,
and that came, no doubt, from the keenness with which he
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Science, Politics and Personalities

observed his vis-a-vis; every gesture, every word was noted.
Even at that advanced age the eye was still keen and seemed to
extract everything His Eminence desired. He did not talk a lot
and the questions he asked were brief and to the point, and he
was a very careful listener. As a patient I found him obedient
and grateful. He enjoyed life and he wanted to go on living.
He had plans for the next hundred years. I think it is one of the
characteristics of really great personalities that they never
reckon with their age and continue to make their plans as
though for all eternity. Their ideas and conceptions are never
limited by the brevity of their own lives.

I succeeded in winning the Cardinal’s confidence and
friendship. Not only did he secure me a private audience with
the Pope but he arranged for the two Physicians-in-Ordinary to
his Holiness to call me into consultation. One of them was
Lapponi, who saw the Pope daily. He was an excellent doctor
with great practical experience and knowledge, and he had
been attached to the Vatican in a medical capacity for many
years. The other was Marchiafava, a famous malaria in-
vestigator and a pathological anatomist. Such a combination
is an excellent one, and it should be used more often than it is. I
have always very willingly consulted a pathological anatomist
whenever there was any question of a tumour or organic
disease, and I have found ^’their ideas as to how a disease will
conduct itself, how it is likely to spread, and what organic
changes are likely to result in consequence, always very
valuable and illuminating — the sort of ideas one would not have
received from other colleagues. Marchiafava was a scientist
of wide knowledge and education, and thus an excellent
complement to the practical Lapponi.

Pius X made an impression of great simplicity and goodness
on me. In appearance he was a typical village priest, but his
natural dignity was compelling. As Pope he was just as he had
been as pastor amongst his beloved Venetians. No priest was
ever better loved in Venice than this former Cardinal del
Sarto. On the day he left Venice to go to Rome for the Papal
election vast crowds accompanied him to the station, cheering
and shouting ‘'Good-bye for ever”. It was the expression of their
hope that he would be elected, for they knew that if he were he

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

would never return to Venice, for the Popes still lived in
voluntary ‘‘imprisonment’’ in the Vatican.

The Pope was that type of sufferer from metabolistic disorders
whose gout preserves life rather than threatens it. He was not
particularly strict in following his regimen, but at least we were
able to control his diet closely. According to long-standing
tradition the Pope never eats in company, but always alone,
and so the control was very easy. The isolated life he was
compelled to lead was a real burden to him. He loved his sisters
and his nieces, but they had to live elsewhere : in a small house
on the Piazza San Pietro, where they would talk willingly to
visitors of the youth and eminent career of the Pope. All that
was now left to them of their family life was a daily visit, always
at the same time, clad in simple black dresses and wearing black
lace mantillas. When they came they were invariably received
with the Salute of Princes by the Swiss Guard.

I went to the Vatican every year up to the outbreak of the
first world war, and I still possess and treasure many mementoes
of those agreeable days, and in particular the great medal which
was struck by the Vatican to celebrate the issue of the famous
Papal Encyclical against Modernism in 1909. Modernism was
flooding over Europe at the time, dangerously it seemed to the
Vatican, threatening to sap the foundations of traditional
morality. It was time to raise a warning voice against excesses,
and Pope Pius X, deeply anxious for the well-being of his
generation and of those whose souls were entrusted to his care as
Vicar of Christ, issued his famous Encyclical. It is not for me to
say what practical good it did. Modern ideas and customs had
come to stay, and to-day few of us see any harm in one-piece
swimming-suits for ladies, foxtrots and tangoes, lipstick, shorts
and smoking, though at that time they filled many good people
with profound misgiving. As far as I know, all that has
remained of the regulations laid down in the Encyclical is that
women may not enter Catholic churches with bare arms.

Many things have changed in the world, but I think that
little can have changed in the spirit and internal structure of
the Catholic Church. The principle of absolute obedience and
the readiness to sacrifice everything for the One True Church
have remained unchanged. C)ne or two instances which go to

Science^ Politics and Personalities

support my view have come to my notice. There was one
Prince of the Church whose name shall not be mentioned here.
Apart from his high office he was the possessor of a large private
income and he lived in some style. His household was
managed by a capable and very attractive young woman who
also, insistent rumour would have it, assisted in lightening the
burden of priestly celibacy. The Bishop, for such he was, fell
ill, and his good Margaret nursed him for years, a devotion for
which the patient always expressed the sincerest gratitude. The
sickness, however, proved fatal in the end, and when the
testament came to be read there was not one penny piece of all
the considerable fortune for her, but there was an explanation
in lieu which declared that His Grace could not take it on his
conscience to deprive the Church of the least mite of his fortune.

Another and rather different instance of this great submission
to the Church came to my notice one morning when I was.
invited to take lunch with the then Papal Secretary of State,.
Cardinal Mery del Val, Before the door of the dining-room,
knelt a distinguished old lady and gentleman. When the doors,
were flung back by uniformed lackeys the Cardinal came
forward and offered them his hand. They kissed his ring on
bended knees and only then did they rise and go in with us, 1
was then presented to the Cardinal’s father, the President of the^
Supreme Spanish Court, and his mother. The two grey^haired
parents had waited patiently on their knees to be received by*
their own son.

On another occasion I was called to the Prior of the^ Church
of Saint Anthony in Padua. I found the sick prelate in a room,
so small that I had some difficulty in getting between the bed
and the wall to examine him. My diagnosis was severe diabetes,,
and I suggested that he should go to Carlsbad to take the waters
there. He declared immediately that it was quite out of the
question: he couldn’t afford it. This was the man through
whose hands tremendous sums passed without control, namely
the offerings in church boxes of countless lovers, fiancees, child-
less women, etc., all over the world who pray to Saint Anthony
for the fulfilment of a wish and then make a money contribution.
Most finance institutes are glad enough when they can find
someone reliable to manage money which is checked, and here

173

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

was a man who controlled tremendous sums of unchecked
money — and yet he couldn’t afford a journey for the sake of his
health. The Church came first ; his health afterwards. This is
typical of the million pillars which carry the Catholic Church
safely through all convulsions. It is immaterial whether the
observer believes or disbelieves in the dogmas of the Church,
the edifice remains worthy of admiration and awe.

The long days I spent in Rome were partly filled by special
studies I was able to make in the Vatican. Thanks to Father
Erie, who was at that time in charge of the Vatican Library, I
was able to examine the unica and use the rooms not open to
the general public, where I studied, and made copies, of the
Raphaels. I think it must have been a real sacrifice for him to
leave his position and take the Cardinal’s hat. Apart from
Harnack, the great evangelical theologian, and Director of the
State Library in Berlin, I never met anyone with such enormous
bibliographical knowledge as Father Erie.

The first world war loosened my relations with the Catholic
Church, but good fortune prevented their entire severance. I
have said that in Berlin I was in charge of the Hospital of
St Francis, and that our Chaplain was Monsignor Dr Frintz,
my very good friend. At that time the Vatican was represented
only in Munich. However, a Concordat was to be signed with
Prussia and a Nunciatur established in Berlin^ Monsignor
.Giovanni Pacelli was entrusted by the Vatican with the
regulation of Catholic status in Prussia. Pacelli had no official
residence and so our Hospital considered it a great honour to
have him as a guest, and he remained with us for years until the
ofiicial building of the Nunciatur was ready on the Cornelixis-
XJfer. The Nuntius said Mass every morning in our little
chapel, and my acquaintance with him developed into good
friendship. He left Berlin to return to Rome as a Cardinal and
Papal Secretary of State. FmaUy, of course, he was elected
Pope. He was a truly holy man of great modesty of character, a
fine personality of keen intelligence and wide human sympathy.
I sent him a respectful message of congratulation on his election
to the Chair of Peter, and his friendly reply showed that he had
not forgotten the years he had lived with us in the Hospital of
Saint Francis.
m

Science^ Politics and Personalities

CHAPTER XV

WILHELM II

The first time I came into contact with the House of
Hohenzollern was when His Royal Highness Prince Eitel
Friedrich went down with pneumonia. The great Kraus was
called in and he took me with him as his assistant. All I did
apart from taking the royal pulse and controlling the royal
temperature was to lend increased solemnity and importance to
the royal case — at least, I hope I did. I certainly tried, and I
felt very important myself. I did my best with the pulse and the
temperature, but no matter how many times I checked they
just wouldn’t come into any proper relationship with each
other and the case : the pulse was much too high. According to
my text-book of internal medicine this was a most sinister
phenomenon. Kraus was as much puzzled about it as I was,
and for a while we were at a complete loss. Then Kraus got the
brilliant idea of taking the pulses of all the other princes and
princesses, and the mystery was solved. They all had pulses
varying between 90 and 100 instead of the average 70. The
Kaiser also had a very high pulse and retained it until his
declining years.

Prince Eitel Friedrich recovered under our ministrations, and
as there was very little to do in the Royal Household, Kraus was
rarely called in. The Kaiser was in regular treatment for
festering mastoids, but the doctor in attendance was, of course,
a specialist. Apart from this chronic complaint the Kaiser was
a healthy man, and there was nothing really wrong with the
Kaiserin either, though she tended to take too much thyroid
gland extract for slimming purposes, but at that time she did
not suffer greatly with blood pressure. It was only later on in
exile that it became aggravated and finally caused her death.

I never saw her, but I heard a lot about her from first-hand
sources. She was a deeply pious woman in the old funda-
mentalist sense. When her first grandchild was born a wet nurse
had to be found. Naturally, the greatest care was taken in
choosing one, and many were rejected for this or that reason,
before a satisfactory one was at last found in the Spreewald,

175

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

which is the traditional home of Germany’s wet nurses. The girl
seemed to be in every way desirable — ^until the Kaiserin began
to make investigations^ and then it came out that the healthy
peasant lassie had obtained her qualifications as wet nurse by
extra-marital relationship. That wouldn’t do for the Kaiserin
at all, and the girl was sent packing.

Progressive minds at the German Admiralty had introduced
prophylactic measures into the Navy against the spread of
venereal diseases, and the results were excellent — ^until one day
the Kaiserin heard about it and on a visit to Kiel she dressed
down the dismayed Admirals for encouraging irrimorality.
The measures were then withdrawn and the field left to the
gonococcus and spiroch^ta — ^with the inevitable results. For
the Kaiser she was something like a collar stud, not of much
value, but essential.

During a conversation on the golf course at Wannsee with the
Crown Prince, or former Crown Prince as he was by that time,
he said to me: ‘^You know, Plesch, if my father had kept
himself a clever and sophisticated French cocotte on the quiet,
the world would have been spared all the trouble and Germany
her disaster.” I don’t know whether it would have helped all
that much, but there it is as the opinion of one who was in some
position to judge.

I got to know the Kaiser’s second wife, Hermine, when she
was still Princess Reuss. I met her in the house of Princess
Marie Radziwill. In her first marriage Hermine was the wife
of a second son of Prince Carolat, whose estate lay near
Zuellichau. Estates were all entailed to the first-born son in
Imperial Germany, and so it was here. Second and younger
sons got little. Hermine was a Princess, but she had very little
money, which was all the more a pity for her because her
husband was an ailing man and needed much medical attention.
She was a good wife and a good mother to her children. During
the lifetime of the Kaiserin Viktoria and before she herself had
become a widow she belonged to the Court, and was therefore
well known to the Kaiser. In the loneliness of exile and himself
a widower the ex-Kaiser married the widowed Princess despite
his advanced years. The marriage led inevitably to a great deal

of criticism, but Hermine lived it down by her own character
176

Science^ Politics and Personalities

and efficiency. She was a devoted companion to the Kaiser
during the last ten years of his life, and she did much to make
his exile easier to bear.

The experts disagree as to whether that exile was ever
necessary. This much is certain: in October 1918 Germany’s
responsible Generals lost their heads and panicked ; not one of
them was ready to defend his Kaiser ; and the Kaiser’s person-
ality and character was not one to take up a struggle whose
outcome seemed doubtful. For what my personal opinion is
worth, I think that nothing serious would have happened to
him in Germany from the Revolution. I feel sure that he would
have been allowed to live in retirement without interference.
Such an attitude would have put the victorious Powers in a
quandary. I am sure they had no intention of bringing him to
trial, and were only too glad when Holland refused to surrender
him. And if they had tried him the sentence could hardly have
been worse than exile in Haus Doom.

Through my good friend Albert Niemann, whom I got to
know when he was Staff Major of Falkenhayn’s Army Corps, I
learned the intimate details of the last critical days and hours
before the abdication and flight. Niemann was a fine soldier
and an upright man of philosophic disposition. Towards the end
of the war he was a Staff Officer at Ludendorff’s Headquarters,
and it was his task to act as liaison officer between the High
Command and the Kaiser, to whom he reported daily on the
war situation. It was he who accompanied the then ex-Kaiser
over the frontier into Holland. His description, which he set
down in a book which has never attracted much attention,
certainly puts the Kaiser in a more sympathetic light than his
Generals.

Personally I have never had the impression that the ex-
Kaiser suffered very much from his Doom exile. The one-time
feared and hated “Ruler by the Grace of God” had become an
Ibsen figure. He continued to fill in his time just as before
with “affairs of State”, and no one disturbed his belief in his
“Mission” as God’s chosen. His days unrolled in the same old
way according to the same old schedule, and the few around
him continued to provide an atmosphere of loyalty and
devotion. The Kaiser’s programme was always arranged to the

177

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

minute, and so it continued to be in Doom, where the Lord
Chamberlain’s Office functioned in the same old way. The
civil, military and naval chiefs made their reports every
day as usual. The world-political situation was discussed and
^‘audiences” were granted. The old Court ceremonial was just
as it had always been. The guests at the royal table were
chosen as carefully as ever. Nothing was missing and the old
Court household was copied in every possible particular —
except that it was like looking at the stage through the wrong
end of the opera glasses.

The very house was a castle by courtesy only. Most of the
permanent staff and Court officials lived at the Gate House.
From there one entered into a walled estate of perhaps twenty
acres with lawns and clumps of trees. In the middle of the
estate was a brick house with sandstone facing which did duty
for a palace. The facade was perhaps a little over 6o feet long,
and there was a first floor and attics. That was all. Inside it
would have been impossible to lose one’s way. Everything was
too clear at first glance. To the right of the hall was a small
reception room and to the side of that a small saloon. At the
back of^the house, running its whole length, was the dining-
room, quite a small hall. Upstairs were the apartments, if
such they could be called, of the ex-Kaiser and his wife. The
furniture had come from the Potsdam palaces. It had been
chosen with very little taste from the great accumulation of
furniture, art and other treasures there. Half-a-dozen French
styles were mixed up and the tapestry went as far as modern
Beauvais. The choice had been made for pomp rather than
nobility. One thing at least I can vouch for, the Kaiser had no
artistic taste whatever, or he could never have lived in such
garish surroundings. The only really beautiful things in the
whole place were a few paintings from the Royal Galleries,
which included a Watteau or two.

The guests assembled in the larger of the two reception rooms
together with the ‘"Courtiers in attendance”, and right on the
dot the ex-Kaiser appeared accompanied by the “Kaiserin”.
Then we all trooped into the dining-hall. The chief article of
decoration was a life-size portrait in oils of the Kaiser in field-
grey Field Marshal’s uniform with the Kaiserin Auguste
178

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Viktoria. The ex-Kaiser sat at the middle of the tables which
was laid with Berlin porcelain and English silver, he on one
side, she on the other. The meals were very frugal. Hermine
handed me some hot buttered toast, and when I wanted to pass
it to her daughter, who was sitting on my right, she refused, and
told me that the buttered toast was for guests only. The
remnants of the mid-day meal were invariably warmed up and
served in the evening. This sort of Spartan frugality was
typical of a good bourgeois but not very well-to-do German
household. It was rather difficult to understand it in Doom,
for the Kaiser was a very rich man. His fortune has been
estimated at something like twelve million pounds, of which the
revolutionary Government did not sequester one penny piece.
This restraint was due chiefly to the Social Democratic Minister
of Finance, Albert Suedekum, who has often told me how hard
he had to battle for the principle that private property should
remain inviolable against the Conservatives who were anxious
to get their hands on some of it. It’s a strange world.

Of course, the Kaiser had only the income and was unable to
touth the capital. And Hermine had to be provided for after
his death, but even so the interest on something like twelve
million pounds ought to have made both ends meet without that
rigid economy at the table.

Hermine was capable and ambitious. She looked after the
old man devotedly and attended to every detail of his life, doing
her utmost to make the whole show as majestic as possible. It
was easy to see, too, that he followed her guidance willingly and
always took the discreet hints she gave him. ‘‘His Majesty”, I
must say, quite often fell out of his majestic role and behaved
like a schoolboy, though I think that was perhaps the most
sympathetic trait I observed in him. His clothes were often
comic. I remember him one morning in a grey suit with blue
criss-cross stripes, a very loud tie of some bluish-mauve material,
light tan shoes and multi-coloured ringed socks. He had a very
simple, schoolboyish sense of humour and would laugh up-
roariously at funny stories. An example of the sort of thing he
found highly diverting was the question : “What is the difference
between an optimist and a pessimist?” He would ask this
question frequently, very often of the same person, and when

1-79

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

they politely told him they couldn’t even guess, he would slap
his thigh and declare with great glee: ‘^You see, an optimist
keeps his trousers up with a belt, whilst a pessimist wears a pair
of braces as well— just in case, you know.” Whereat the laughter
would be most hearty. It was interesting to note that he
usually spoke English and seemed to prefer it, and whilst his
German came in rather jerky sentences, his English was very
fluent.

Seen at a distance his appearance was deceptive. He looked
quite broad and martial, but when you got nearer you dis-
covered that he was no more than middle height and not at all
a powerful figure. He was a fine-looking old gentleman though,
with his wavy white hair, his clear blue eyes and his carefully
tended pointed beard. He had a real passion for hearing him-
self speak. I should think he was the worst listener of his time.
His feeling of complete superiority to everyone and everything
around him, coupled with a consciousness of his great mission,
made it imperative that he should know everything. Long,
long before the first world war and the revolution there was a
very popular saying in Germany : ^^The good God knows every-
thing of course, only Wilhelm knows it all much better”. I have
spoken to many people who came into close contact with him,
and they all say the same thing : he never listened to the end of
any report, but interrupted with his own opinion long before
the speaker had got to the point, and after that it was the
devil’s own job to move hiim. The referent had to listen
humbly and swallow his own arguments even at the risk of'
bursting. Not that Wilhelm was a fool; he grasped things^
quickly and what he said was often sensible enough even when
it was wrong. His language was by no means fine, but* often,
very unceremonious and even vulgar.

He liked best to talk standing up, and then his hearers- would
be treated to a recurring embarrassment. He would pick up his
withered right arm by the sleeve and fold his normal left arm
over it to hold it in place, but before long in the heat of the
conversation it would slip out and fall helplessly to his side.
Then he would seize hold of it again by the sleeve and dtagut up
impatiently and hastily, something like an irritable nurse-with a
fractious child. Every time this happened his face- would
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

darken angrily, but once the useless ballast was safely tucked
away again it would clear and resume whatever facial aspect
suited the conversation. I discussed this point with Emil
Ludwig, who attached great importance to the Kaiser’s physical
deformity in his biography “Wilhelm II”. Perhaps Ludwig
went too far in insisting that the crippling of a vain man holds
the key to the character of a historic figure, but there is no
doubt that in the case of the Kaiser his development and his fate
were partly decided by this misfortune. That Byronic melan-
cholia which played such a literary role was undoubtedly
derived from Byron’s club foot, on account of which he had been
spoiled and privileged from childhood, with the result that he
felt like an outcast. One can never be sure exactly what role a
physical deformity of this sort will play in a man’s life.
Richard III was a hunchback. Listen to him (or to Shakespeare,
it is unimportant) :

“I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion.

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them. . . .

And therefore ... I am determined to prove a villain.”

The ex-Kaiser certainly did not go in for melancholia, and he
was not a villain either in the ordinary sense, rather a good
husband and father according to his lights, but perhaps his
deformity, his consciousness of a defect compensated itself in the
attitude of superiority he always displayed, and urged him on to
his notorious boastfulness, and to his frequent table-smiting with
the fist of his whole arm. When he was young he loved to show
himself in heroic and martial posture, preferably on horseback
at the head of his troops. But despite shining helm, and up-
turned moustache it was very difficult; he was a cripple of
medium height and even then of no athletic figure.

His deformity was not an inherited one, but the consequence
of sheer bad luck in an operation to save life performed by the
famous gynsecologist Martin. The Kaiser was a breech birth,
and in the withdrawal the right arm got caught between the

i8i

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

skull and the bony structure of the pelvis and the elbow had to
be broken ; in fact, it was smashed beyond hope of recovery.
In later life the Kaiser was extremely vindictive and never
forgave poor Martin, though the man saved his life at the
expense of his arm.

I have said that the Kaiser was no villain as a private
individual, but, of course, a Kaiser is not a private individual,
and in his position a lack of proper responsibility (even without
any ‘‘criminal intent”) can prove in effect the same as a crime.
The Kaiser most certainly lacked this sense of responsibility,
and millions of innocent men and women paid for it with their
lives. As a private individual Wilhelm II was beyond all doubt
what is usually described as an honest, God-fearing man, but as
Kaiser he was equally certainly a most malignant influence.
The line between guilt and innocence, between culpable
neglect and inadequate intellect, is always very difficult to
draw. The Kaiser was no fool. He was quite honest in that he
was firmly convinced of his mission — but the people who
surrounded him 'cannot be exonerated from guilt.

Whilst I was at Doom the Kaiser gave me a memento of my
visit in the shape of a book containing the favourite sermons he
had preached in the little chapel of his house on Sundays. I
read them with interest and I was impressed by the deep
religious feeling which informed them, almost to the point of
fanaticism. The moral and ethical standards of these homilies
are high. Nothing in them sounds false or hypocritical. They
give some idea of the source from which he drew the strength to
bear his exile with equanimity.

In his attempts to justify himself before posterity he has not
hesitated to blame everything on to other people. All bad
losers do that. Many people declare that to the end of his days
the Kaiser was firnily convinced that he was a much-mis-
understood man and that a great injustice had been done to him.

It was Wilhelm IFs fate to have been born in the atmosphere
of Bismarck’s megalomaniac policy without possessing the sure
hand and keen eye of the master for the limitations imposed by
circumstances.

Science, Politics and Personalities

CHAPTER XVI

PRINCESS MARIE RADZIWILL

Three big German estates lay comparatively close to each
Other, that of Prince Reuss and that of Prince Garolat, both
near Zueliichau, and that of Princess Radziwill at Kleinitz.
It was quite natural therefore that these three families saw a
great deal of each other and there was a long-established
friendship between them. The centre of the society was Princess
Marie Radziwill, the daughter of the French Marshal Boni-
Gastellane and a Talleyrand. Marie had married Prince Anton
Radziwill, who was adjutant to Kaiser Wilhelm I and accom-
panied him into the field during the Franco-Prussian War.
Every day throughout the war and the absence of her husband
the Princess received a letter from Prussian Headquarters with
all the latest war news, uncensored and straight from the scene
of action. Her diaries were full of many intimate matters of
great historical importance.

She had four children. She was indifferent to the first-born
son, Michael, but doted on Stasch, the second son. One
daughter married Gount Roman Potocky, the owner of the
Lancut estate in Austrian Poland, and the fourth child, also a
daughter, married the Gounf s brother, Joseph Potocky, who
possessed wide lands and big sugar factories in Russian Poland.
It was a very international family with connections all over
Europe. When the first world war broke out Michael was
married to a Belgian ; Stasch was Adjutant to the Grand Duke
Michael; one daughter was in Russia, the other in Austria.
And the rest of the closer relations of the family were in France
and Italy. For whose victory was Marie Radziwill to pray?

She was over eighty when I first met her, and she lived in a
Palais on the Pariser Platz which belonged to the Guards and
had been left to her use for life, though from time to time she
retired to her Kleinitz estate for rest and recuperation. She
was loaded with worldly honours and titles, but she was not a
happy woman. She did not get on very well with her eldest son
Michael, who would inherit the estate and the title, and she was
passionately fond of Stasch, the second son. Her love for him
was the one great emotion of her declining years. The old

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

Radziwill estate was part of the Duchy of Sagan, the Neswitch
estate, which was inherited by the first-born son, Michael,
and consisted of about 800,000 acres on Russian territory. For
the second son, her beloved Stasch, she was determined to create
a second and even larger estate of a million acres in Volhynia.
For this she had to obtain the permission of both the Kaiser and
the Czar, because the land in question lay partly in Germany
and partly in Russia. She realized her ambition shortly before
the outbreak of the first world war and Stasch had his estate
and, incidentally, the only elks left in Europe — ^perhaps the
last in the world, unless one counts the American moose.

During the war the Princess was not short of respectful
admirers, but she felt very lonely, and the war literally broke
her heart. The most devoted of all her visitors was the Spanish
Ambassador, Polo de Barnabe, a splendid Cervantes figure of
real grandeur and old-world courtesy. But by that time
Princess Marie was living in the past and writing her memoirs-^
all for her beloved Stasch. During the war she was kept under
surveillance by the German police, and for this reason she gave
me her manuscripts, her diary and the letters of her dead
husband. I entrusted the German author Max Schoenau, who
had made some reputation for himself by the translation of
French books into German, with these various documents with
a view to their translation. After the death of the Princess the
German authorities confiscated the original letters of Wilhelm
I’s former Adjutant, the diary, the manuscript of her memoirs
and the half-finished translation as well, and I could never
get to hear anything more about them. A very great pity, but
perhaps they will turn up again one day. The diary ended
with the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-
Prussian War. I remember its last words very well: “To hold
is not to own”. They were prophetic.

Marie Radziwill never became German in anything but
technicality. She came from Provence, and the atmosphere of
Kleinitz was wholly Proven^ale. In a strange country she
created for herself the surroundings of her origin. She was a
dominating nature : dignified, noble and hard. To me she was
the embodiment of history — ^history from the inside. Sitting
round the open fireplace during the long winter evenings at
184

Science^ Politics and Personalities

Kleinitz, it was fascinating to listen to her as she described the
intimate details of European Court life with her inimitable
cynicism and humour. So great was her ability to re-create the
past that to listen to her was almost to experience the things she
was describing.

She was a very clever and intelligent woman, and yet in some
respects she was naive and trustful, almost like a child, or,
perhaps better, like an aristocrat. Having read a prospectus
from an Italian firm on the enormous profits to be expected
from the planting of quick-growing poplars for paper-making
she planted her estate with forests of poplars pourfaire de V argent
pour Stasch, In twenty years he was to have great paper-mills
to add to his income. She also purchased Proven§ale an-
tiquities, and was delighted at the bargains she made at the
expense of the ignorant dealers who sold them to her far below
what she knew was their real value — except that they were
clever fakes. As a Provengale she was cunning, but a Prov^ngale
dealer was even more cunning than a Provengale.

Princess Marie Radziwill was a strange and fascinating
figure, with her aspirations which could never be realized, her
dissatisfactions with the world around her, and her love of
power. She was a figure from another and bygone world, like
some half-forgotten character from an aristocratic Gothic novel.
She was one of the last great representatives of a dying caste.
Such a character fitted into Central Germany indifferently well,
but just as she was, she was liked, loved and admired by those
who came into contact with her, including Hermine Princess
of Reuss. Princess Marie was an aristocrat, and it was this
society of her peers which made life half-way tolerable for her.

The aristocracy is the oldest internationale. Its caste system
extends horizontally through all the civilized countries of
Europe. It holds together and forms a sort of social super-
structure over all civilized peoples. Its solidarity is more secure
than that of any socialist international, and it defends its
privileged position everywhere and over all frontiers. After, and
even during the great and bitter national struggles the aris-
tocracy in the victorious countries always succeeded in protect-
ing their confreres in the defeated countries and tempering the
bitter wind of defeat. The aristocracy knows well that the

185

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

weakening of its position anywhere is the weakening of it every-
where. The aristocracy is primarily international, and national
only secondarily. For this reason one very seldom finds em-
bittered Chauvinists in its ranks. This nationalism with reserva-
tions, which is quite compatible with true patriotism, has spared
the world much bloodshed, but it has hardly furthered social
development.

After the first world war Germany was exhausted both
physically and spiritually, and at this stage certain aristocratic
circles in Germany were in favour of placing the country under
military control as a demonstration of their honest desire for
peace. I was a guest of the Reichs-Gount Friedrich Schaff-
gotsch in Schloss Warmbrunn together with the leading aristo-
crats of Silesia when the subject came up for discussion, and
they were all in agreement with a suggestion that the French
and German General Staffs should exchange representatives in
permanence. This measure would, of course, have tended to
strengthen both countries, bring them together and limit their
armaments. There would have been no national humiliation in
a mutual exchange of Staff officers. Naturally, the thing was
by no means as simple as the Silesian aristocrats imagined ; for
one thing it would have disturbed the balance of power in
Europe in favour of the two Powers concerned, and that would
have aroused strong objections in various quarters. However,
the point I am making here is that these German aristocrats
were quite in favour of international control. The nationalistic
lunacy was not encouraged by them. Their greatest anxiety
was to defend their privileged position against proletarian en-
croachment. Against the Marxist slogan “Workers of the world
unite” they favoured: “Aristocrats and capitalists of all coun-
tries unite”.

The Warmbrunn estate consisted of some 150,000 acres, a
mere remnant of the once enormous Schaffgotsch possessions.
After the treachery of Wallenstein and the conclusion of the
Treaty of Pilsen the Count Schaffgotsch of the day lost his head
and two-thirds of his possessions : one-third was presented to
Prince Hatzfeld, another third to Prince Pless, and the Schaff-
gotsch heir was left with the remaining third. In the thousand

years of its existence, apart from the one regrettable — and no
|86

Science^ Politics and Personalities

doubt regretted — lapse of the Count who lost his head, the
SchafFgotschs were always loyal servants of their masters, and
devoted Catholics who used their large income from land,
forest and, in later years, industry to further the cause of the
Church. The remarkable finding of a thousand-year-old
ostrich egg on the estate impelled the Schaffgotschs to interest
themselves in ornithology noblesse oblige, with the result that an
ornithological museum unique in Germany was built up in
Warmbrunn. Its collection of eggs is the biggest and best in
Europe. It was here that I studied the marvellous protective
mimicry of the wicked cuckoo : for each type of nest used by the
interloper there was the appropriately coloured and flecked
egg-shell.

Until the coming of Hitler life in Schioss Warmbrunn went on
more or less unchanged for generations. The hunts were re-
markable. At a signal blown on an old horn something like two
hundred members of the hunt of both sexes would form ranks in
accordance with a discipline and ceremonial unchanged since
the Middle Ages. The estate spread along the Silesian moun-
tains up to the crest, and its stag-hunt was one of the best in the
country. It was also renowned for its woodcock. This was what
I enjoyed most ; getting up early in the morning, sometimes at
three o’clock, and setting off to slaughter the poor wretches at
roding time, the height of their lives. It was thrilling, but I
always had rather a bad conscience ; it seemed a bit mean.

Schioss Warmbrunn maintained its old mediaeval customs
with as little change as possible ; for instance the drinking water
w^as fetched from a source four miles away and brought back
by donkey. The tower watchman supervised the whole business
of loading and transport with a telescope. About a century
before the old castle had been gutted by fire, but fortunately the
fine library and the collections had been saved. The incunabula
and unica in the library were alone sufficient to make it
renowned.

I have had the opportunity of visiting quite a number of old
castles, including several in England. Of course, there are very
few on the Continent which can compare in age and historical
importance with those in England, but the one I liked best
of all was Schioss Oberglogau. It was a Wallenstein build-

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

ing with four courtyards, something after the style of Peter-
borough Castle, the home of the Earl of Exeter. I have long
been an intimate friend of the last owner, Reichs-Count Hans
von Oppersdorff, and his family. His mother was a Talleyrand
and his wife a Radziwill. There were thirteen children of the
marriage, and although Hans was a hereditary member of the
Prussian Upper House his heart was divided between France
and Poland, and the atmosphere of Schloss Oberglogau was a
mixture of their two cultures. Everything was authentic there,
including the fifty holograph Wallenstein letters in the library
and the sonata MSS. of Beethoven, who had composed them
whilst staying there and dedicated them to his patron. Hans
was a perfect product of classical Jesuit education. I owed much
to him — something of the art of savoir vivre^ for one thing. He
hated Prussian militarism from the bottom of his heart, and in
the end it cost him the family estate, the castle — and his pass-
port. To-day he is formally French as well as by inclination.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DIPLOMATIC WORLD

Xhe diplomats are in a class of their own. At one time they
had a high reputation for skill, but a low one for honesty. Truth
was not thought to consort with them frequently, and Stubbs
wrote frankly: ‘‘As diplomacy was in its beginnings, so it lasted
for a long time ; the ambassador was the man who was sent to
lie abroad for the good of his country’’. When diplomats spoke
it was only to conceal their thoughts. In these days of swift
communications, overseas and overland lines, cables, telephones
and wireless the task of the diplomat has changed to some extent.
Many of them, for ail their feeling of importance, are no more
than the formal messengers of their governments, and there is
little need for them to talk. I have known many diplomats in
my time, and few of them spoke freely, but those who did
usually had something to say, and what they said was worthy of
note. Generally speaking they were men who really represented
the governments which accredited them.

The first British Ambassador to Berlin after the war was one

i88

Science, Politics and Personalities

of this sort. Lord D’Abernon was an agreeable personality;
slim yet muscular in appearance, simple and friendly in his
manner, even jovial, and extraordinarily helpful in his attitude.
He thought highly of German art and science. He was a
philanthropist and teetotaller. More than that, he was an
ardent enemy of alcohol ; in fact he believed the roots of all evil
to lie in drink. I cannot remotely share this viewpoint. I some-
times discussed it with him, but I am quite sure that nothing I
said to the contrary altered his strong views one iota. I have
often wondered whether his fanaticism in this respect was
aggravated in part at least by the compensatory zeal of the
reformed sinner : rumour has it that as a young man D’Abernon
was the model for Claude Farrere’s famous novel Uhomme qui
assassina. However, apart from his hatred of what he called
alcoholism, D’Abernon was no puritan, nor was his wife, a
woman of sixty with the grace, elegance and slim figure of a
woman half her age.

Unfortunately D’Abernon thought that with the dismissal of
the Kaiser Germany was cured, and subsequent developments
therefore aroused no misgivings in him. Not only was the
Kaiser safely and harmlessly in Doom, but — and perhaps that
was even more important — the German High Seas Fleet was at
the bottom of Scapa Flow. There was no further danger, and
D’Abernon could afford to be generous. He was — to the point
of being Germanophile, and he followed Germany’s recovery
with great interest and sympathy. His generosity was shame-
fully exploited.

Social receptions at the British Embassy gathered together the
best and most interesting people in Germany. I remember one
given in honour of Ramsay MacDonald. He struck me truly as
the innocent abroad. He was presented with a representative
extract of the Germany of that day. Ruling circles in Great
Britain honestly believed that Germany had experienced a
change of heart, and their attitude was guided by that belief.
It was only with the arrival of Ambassador Lindsay that that
fond belief gradually disappeared.

Lindsay was a lean man with a long moustache, cool and
reserved in his attitude. He was assisted greatly by his brilliant
charge d'affaires, Sir Joseph Addison (who had come with

189

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

D’Abernon). In appearance Sir Joseph was a diplomat out of a
book. Always well dressed and with a most engaging ease of
manner, he found it simple to win the confidence of people of
all classes. Thanks to his charming manners, his humour and
his evident love of life, he was a favourite of Berlin society. In
addition he was a very shrewd man and a remarkable linguist ;
both his German and his French were excellent and one could
hardly recognize the foreigner.

Lady Lindsay was an American, and that gave the British
Embassy its special note, but with the arrival of Sir Horace
Rumbold and his wife the atmosphere immediately became
authentically and traditionally English again. By this time it
was evident enough that the weakness, often deliberate, of the
German Government was tremendously enhancing the strength
of the nationalistic elements. Sir Horace Rumbold’s criticism
was frank and his contempt for the Nazi leaders unconcealed.
When they came to power his relations with them were of the
coolest and strictly limited to official necessities, though both
he and his wife gladly maintained their social contacts with
intellectual and artistic circles in Berlin society, and this was
true in particular of Lady Rumbold and her daughter. The
Rumbolds hated Nazi Germany and I am sure they were
heartily glad to leave it when Sir Horace was recalled soon after
the Nazi accession to power.

Gambon was French Ambassador to Berlin before the first
world war. He was a typical representative of an older culture
and a more formal etiquette. He was not a war-monger, but he
detested Imperial Germany and had difficulty in concealing the
fact. I am convinced that right up to the last moment he did
what little he could to prevent the outbreak of war. When the
inevitable happened he and his daughter left Berlin by car, and
had the disagreeable experience of being mobbed by a crowd
of patriotic hooligans.

After the war de Margerie pere was the first French Ambas-
sador in Berlin. He was in the sixties then and a man of refine-
ment with a most tolerant outlook. He came from Lorraine,
but he had nothing of the obstinacy reputed to be typical of his
fellow countrymen. With his grey hair and moustache he was a
real grand seigneur in appearance and manners, and towards his

Science^ Politics and Personalities

young wife, who was constandy ailing, he was more like an
ardent lover than an established husband. The evening recep-
tions at the Embassy were typically French in their social
culture. Mme de Margerie was very musical and herself a fine
performer on the harp of quite professional standard. At the
afternoon receptions, when there was dancing, the atmosphere
was easy and informal, more like a social occasion than a
diplomatic affair. The Embassy itself is well known for its
beautiful interior and for the requisite taste of its furnishings and
decorations, but the surroundings are nothing without the
spirit breathed into them, and M. de Margerie and his wife
were most delightful hosts.

The French Ambassador was a good deal more sceptical of
developments in Germany than his English colleagues, but he
was not unsympathetic. His general attitude to affairs was very
much that of Briand. He was not well liked in the Wilhelm-
strasse, and though he complained bitterly of the lack of honesty
shown towards him, he never took vigorous action to insist on
the proper fulfilment of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty.

His successor was Francois Poncet, a trained literary his-
torian and something of a diplomatic outsider. He had taken
his degree in Germany with a dissertation on a theme from
Goethe. His wife was a charming woman from Alsace, and like
so many of her fellow countrymen she was very French. I
believe she was happier looking after her household and her
five children than attending to diplomatic afiairs. Frangois
Poncet showed a keen interest in Germany, and he must have
seen much and learned much, but nevertheless he, too, was
overtaken by the swiftness of events. Even after he had seen
Hider in power he still felt convinced that he would change his
views. To this one of his listeners observed drily: ‘‘His views
maybe, but not his character”.

Not that Frangois Poncet was an innocent; far from it. He
did not trust the Nazis, and his contempt for their barbarism
was profound, but his own character was too high for him to
conceive the depths of perfidy and inhumanity to which they
were capable * of descending. A typical Frenchman, with his
dark eyes and his small pointed moustache, his personality was
most engaging. He was a very good friend to me, and he sue-

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

ceeded in saving my house from the Nazi vandals. With its
beautiful Slevogt frescoes it became the Institut Frangais, Un-
fortunately nothing could save it when the Lancasters drummed
over Berlin, and it is now a heap of ruins.

Gerard, the American Ambassador to Germany before the
first world war, was the only one who really saw what was
happening, and realized what was going to happen: the war,
the defeat of Germany, the abdication of the Kaiser and
proclamation of the Republic. The broad-shouldered, athletic
man always remains in my memory as a prophet — and I can
still feel the weight of his great hand when, laughing heartily at
something or other, he would bring it down on my shoulder
with a thump. His Charge d" Affaires was a Mr. Grew who later
became better known to the world as the diplomatic representa-
tive of the United States in Tokio right up to Pearl Harbour.
He was a young man in those days, cheerful and quick-witted.
His formal German remained broken to the last, but he could
talk fluently in a Lerchenfeld dialect you could cut with a knife.
He still owes me the hundred cigarettes I wagered him that
America would enter the war. He took the bet as a matter of
diplomatic duty, knowing full well that he would lose it.

The first United States Ambassador to Berlin after the war
was not Gerard, the one real man for the job, but a manufac-
turer of unbreakable glass named Haughton. Perhaps he was
a very capable industrialist, but as a politician he did not shine.
This was during the inflation period, and at least there was one
American in Germany who had eyes to see what was happening ;
that was the Reparations Agent, Parker Gilbert, a confidant of
Andrew Mellon. Neither tricks nor propaganda could pull the
wool over his eyes. He saw through the machinations of Ger-
many’s politicians and financiers, and his reports were models of
objectivity and firmness. In his spare time Parker Gilbert had
an equally keen eye for art, and in those inflationary days it was
easy to buy. More than one valuable work of art found its way
into Andrew Mellon’s famous collection (afterwards left to the
public) through Parker Gilbert.

After Haughton came a thin, friendly little * man with an
engaging smile, Ambassador Schurmann. He was a professor,
and very much the professor of popular tradition. As an
192

THE AUTHOR IN 1 923

Portrait by Max Slevogt.

ENTRANCE HALL AND STAIRWAY OF THE AUTHOR’S BERLIN HOUSE

Architecture by Bruno Paul. Decoration by Slevogt.

ANOTHER BEDROOM

The Chinoiserie panelling is from a Parmo palazzo and
dates from the 14th century.

STAGE DESIGN BY SLEVOGT FOR A PRODUCTION OF “dON

SELF-PORTRAIT BY ORLIK

TROTSKY AT BREST-LITOVSK, IQlS MATTHIAS ERZBERGER

Lithograph by Orlik. Portrait by Orlik, 1919.

S

GERHART HAUPTMANN READING HIS OWN WORKS BEFORE AN

AUDIENCE

Sketch by Orlik made in 1919.

ORLIK POSTER FOR HAUPTMANN’s ^^DIE WEBER^’ FOR A PERFORMANCE IN 1 897

CARTOON OF IBSEN BY OLAF GULBRANDSON, MADE FOR HIS
SISTER-IN-LAW, BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON

Science^ Politics and Personalities

ambassador he was quite out of his element. He had no
practical knowledge of human nature and as he was a decent
man himself he was inclined to believe that everyone with whom
he came in contact was similarly decent. He was wrong.
Ribbentrop was one of those who made it his business to come
into contact with the naive and friendly German-American,
and Schurmannj who was very conscious of his German descent,
was partly responsible for Ribbentrop’s rise in the world.
German science was supreme for Schurmann, and the name
Heidelberg was like a magic incantation. He contributed the
enormous sum of 100,000 dollars to the university, for which he
was given an honorary degree. Ribbentrop and his cronies
turned the induction ceremony into a nationalistic demonstra-
tion with Schurmann as the sacrificial lamb. The poor man’s
eyes were never opened to what game was being played with
him, and whilst he remained Ambassador the American
Embassy was a centre of pro- German appeasement. When
President Roosevelt was elected Schurmann was recalled.

Before the first world war Ambassador de Beyens turned
the Belgian Embassy into a remarkably fine gallery of Flemish
paintings. He was greatly enamoured of Germany’s culture,
which he regarded as related to his own, and he was very much
at home in German society. Under his aegis the Belgian Em-
bassy was socially predominant in many respects and a brilliant
centre of Flemish and Brabant culture and riches. Unfortu-
nately the one thing above all others which M. de Beyens was
presumably sent to Berlin to see he failed to see at all, and that
was the terrifying danger which threatened his country from
German militarism.

The Belgian Ambassador to Berlin after the war was Robert
Everts, .a diplomat of great experience with particular know-
ledge of China, South America and Mexico, where he had
served his country for many years. He was not deceived. He
hated what he saw in Germany, but he also hated everything
which smelt even remotely of Bolshevism, and between them
the two hates paralysed action. He was a Conservative demo-
crat of liberal outlook (if the mixture doesn’t sound all too
impossible). A keen sportsman, he rode and swam excellently,
and he was also a very fine billiards player. Outwardly he was

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

a silent and keenly observant man, but in a circle of friends he
would thaw and talk freely. From Berlin he went as Belgian
Ambassador to Madrid, and when the civil war broke out he
removed his Embassy, as most other Ambassadors did, to
French territory at St Jean de Luz.

I was there on holiday with my wife and children two sum-
mers and I had an opportunity of observing the ensuing diplo-
matic chaos at first hand. Everyone was aware that Franco’s
victory would endanger the peace of Europe. He enjoyed no
one’s active sympathy (I am not including Germany and Fascist
Italy, of course), but he benefited from the general distrust and
dislike of ‘^Reds”, Bolshevism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism,
which prevented the Western Powers from killing Fascism in
Spain when they had the chance, and thus countering the
machinations of Germany and Italy.

The first Italian Ambassador in Berlin after the war was
Count Bosdari. He was a historian of great knowledge, with a
passion for holding lectures. The University of Berlin willingly
gave him an opportunity of doing so. His lectures, learned
dissertations delivered in classical style, were well attended and
they would have been had he been simple Professor Bosdari
rather than Count and Italian Ambassador. Countess Bosdari
was also a highly cultured person, and the atmosphere of the
Embassy was created by her personality. Even on light days
lunch or tea was served at the Embassy with drawn blinds by
the soft light of many candles. The Countess, a dark Petrar-
chian type, had been a very beautiful woman in her day, but
she knew that daylight no longer flattered her and she preferred
the gentler candle-light when receiving her guests.

Count Bosdari’s successor was Aldovrandi. By that time
Italy was Fascist, but Aldovrandi, a man of middle age,
sophisticated, a little tired and an extremely finicky connoisseur
of good things, was a very unfascist type. He was no mean
judge of antique furniture, sculpture and objets d^art generally.
Women of experience found him fascinating. Perhaps he was
sent to Berlin more for social than political reasons. The Italian
role in Berlin in those days was a little complicated : towards
the victorious Powers Italy played the role of the insulted friend
who wished to be moUified (she felt she had not got enough out
194

Science^ Politics and Personalities

of the Versailles Treaty) ; towards the defeated Germans she
was the patronizing but friendly victor. And now, in addition,
she was fascist.

The Italian Embassy was the first to show signs of the
nationalistic lunacy which plunged the world into a second
disaster, and its receptions were no longer so agreeable, though
the dinners with their beautifully prepared national dishes and
excellent wines were as good as ever. When the Embassy gave
musical evenings masterpieces were played by masters — but
first came the playing of “Giovinezza”. It was very depressing.

After Aldovrandi came an aged professional diplomat
named Orsini, probably more on account of his wife, who was
the daughter of Guttmann, founder of the Dresdner Bank, than
for his capacities, but as things got politically more tense he was
replaced by Cerutti, a career bureaucrat who had already
represented Fascism in China and Moscow. He was a tali
man with penetrating eyes, at least they looked penetrating,
but I suspect they were more like the ultra-violet rays which are
absorbed by the thin upper layer of the object on which they are
focused. His wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Eduard
Paulay, the former Director of the Budapest National Theatre.
She had been an actress and she was half-Hungarian, half-
Jewess, a splendid mixture of the two with her fiery, dark
beauty. Perhaps it helped Cerutti to understand the real charac-
ter of the regime which had arrived with Hitler when a horde
of Nazi hooligans in their brown shirts mobbed his wife. They
had recognized the Jewess but not the Ambassadress. Official
apologies were forthcoming, of course, for what that^consolation
was worth. Soon after that Cerutti went to Paris as Italian
i^mbassador.

I am an observer of symptoms by profession, and I am used
to building up a diagnosis from comparatively minor indica-
tions. It gives me a great feeling of satisfaction when I can
obtain a deeper knowledge of things in this way. Many such
indications as far as Italy was concerned came from my friend
Francesco Lequio, whose acquaintance I made when he was
at the Italian Embassy in Berlin. Later he went to Cairo and
then to Rio, to return to Europe again, this time as Establish-
ment Officer in the Foreign Office in Rome. Finally he went

195

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

to Madrid as Italian Ambassador. With the exception of
Madrid, and that on account of the war, I visited him at most
of his posts. Unfortunately he died in 1943 of kidney trouble
and I was unable to be of any assistance to him. He was an
experienced and clever diplomat, and I know that he never
shared the ideas of the megalomaniac Mussolini. Like others in
the inner circle, Lequio knew that Mussolini^s grandiose
schemes were impracticable. Some of them admired his inner-
political achievements, but they all knew that in the end his
policy must lead to a catastrophe. And they all, without
exception, knew that Ciano was a blockhead.

Italy’s professional diplomats were purely executive organs;
they were sent abroad to carry out the ideas concocted in
Rome; they were like generals in the field: theirs was the
tactical task of carrying out the strategy of others without
criticism — and often without conviction. Grandi did the same
in London.' He certainly was a convinced Fascist, and I have
no doubt that he was loyal to Mussolini, but he was a clever and
far-sighted man. He was well aware of the dangerous game his
master was playing with Great Britain. Grandi liked and
respected the English people and he was under no illusions
about Great Britain’s strength, but it was his job in London to
do a little sabre-rattling blackmail. He didn’t like the task at
all, but as a good soldier he did his best. He rarely drank and
always attached importance to a good night’s rest, but during
the days of crisis he would let himself be seen constantly in night
clubs until the early hours of the morning, pretending sang-
froid and indifference before all who cared to observe him. He
bluffed desperately, like a poker-player with poor cards and a
heavy stake, but, if I know him, the mask dropped off and he
collapsed as soon as he was alone in his room. If Grandi’s
advice had been taken Italy would never have entered the war
on Germany’s side.

Thanks to my very good relations with Italy’s diplomats I
knew that Mussolini felt a deep contempt for Hitler as a person,
but an excessive respect for Germany’s achievements. He over-
estimated Germany and he under-estimated Great Britain.
That cost him his life. But Mussolini was not another Hitler,
Not all his work was bad ; some of it can be taken over and
196

Science^ Politics and Personalities

developed to the benefit of Italy, whereas Hitler’s work must
be extirpated utterly if Germany is ever to raise her head
amongst the nations of the world again.

I was not in very close touch with Czarist diplomats in
Berlin. I knew Count Osten-Sacken quite well, but it is not an
acquaintance I look back on with any pleasure. The man was a
senile debauche and he had taken the whole first floor of the
Hotel Minerva opposite the Embassy and installed his kept
women there under his eye. He was, perforce perhaps, what is
known as a voyeur. From his Embassy window he could indulge
in his remaining pleasure to the full.

After the war and the Russian Revolution there was a very
different atmosphere in the grey building of the Unter den
Linden Embassy and very different men took charge. At first
everything was extremely secretive. Mysterious figures furtively
approached the Embassy after dark and were cautiously
admitted, or they slipped out equally cautiously and disap-
peared in the gloom. But when Krestinsky arrived things
changed, and I have described the new regime elsewhere in
this book. The Russians were assiduously courted and spied on
at the same time, but the Germans got very little for their
trouble one way or the other. Moscow at least was one capital
where those in authority were never for one moment in doubt
as to what they had to expect from Germany.

However, the house in Unter den Linden was only the formal
Embassy; the real one was in the Lindenstrasse, where the
Soviet Trade Delegation had its offices. And here the Russians
were equally assiduously courted, but this time by Germany’s
industrialists avid for large orders at excessive prices. To use a
German patriotic phrase, the Russians really did '"Give gold
for iron”, or steel if you like, but it was steel in the form of
tools and machinery. The Russians were willing to pay heavily,
but it was they who, in the last resort, got the better of the
bargain. The Russian war machine which finally broke
Germany owed much to German aid. The apprentice served
his time and then beat his master.

Although I always maintained very friendly relations with
the Polish aristocracy through the Radziwill, Potocky, Mici-
elszky, Skoldzky and Wielopolski families, the only Polish

197

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

diplomat I knew well was the Polish Ambassador Olszovsky.
He was an honest enough man and a loyal representative of
Pilsudsky. He disliked and feared Russia, and he was honestly
in favour of an understanding with Germany, but he was not
clever enough to keep his end up against Germany and at the
same time avoid offence to Russia. I say ‘^not clever enough'’,
but could any man, no matter how clever, have made a success
of Poland’s foreign policy? The new-born babes of the dilet-
tantist peace of 1919 all sucked greedily — and they almost all
upset their stomachs. The Polish baby was the greediest of them
all. It had already been given far more than it could digest
satisfactorily, and it still envied the possessions of others. It
seized Vilna by force from the Lithuanians, and at the last
moment it perfidiously joined hands with Germany to rob the
prostrate body of Czechoslovakia. The world should not so
easily forget experiences of that sort.

I have, of course, known very many people of importance in
Hungary, and when I stayed in Budapest I was always over-
whelmed with requests for professional consultations. Amongst
my patients were many people of high character and intelligence,
but few of them are known outside Hungary. The three figures
of European importance I knew well were the Regent Nicolaus
Horthy, the Minister-President Count Bethlen and the fascist
leader Julius Goemboes.

Horthy was never anything more than an Austro-Hungarian
subaltern officer in Admiral’s uniform. His mental horizon
never enlarged beyond that of a naval lieutenant, and a
mediocre one at that, and his format as a statesman was truly
insignificant. He was a man of medium height with a good
figure, and he looked well in uniform. He had clear-cut
features, an eagle-like nose, a square chin and a rather high
forehead, which made him look more intelligent than he was in
reality. I said just now that he had the mental horizon of a
naval lieutenant, but I am giving him too much credit; his
mental development was arrested in his cadet-school days. He
was brought up in loyalty to the House of Habsburg, and it is a
bit of a mystery to me how he could ever have conducted him-
self so disloyally towards Kaiser Karl. During my conversations
with him I came to the conclusion that his outlook, if such it
198

Science^ Politics and Personalities

can be called, was a sort of petrified conservatism, and that he
was never likely to form any new opinion of his own. The mere
mention of Russia — not even Bolshevism — was to him like a
red rag is supposed to be to a bull. But if one avoided irritating
his raw spots he was tractable enough. His Ministers had no
very difficult task, therefore, and. a man of Stephan Bethlen’s
capacity found it easy to manage him.

Bethlen himself was a European in outlook and a very
talented one. He was certainly no friend of the Germans and it
was not long before he recognized the danger that threatened
Hungary from that quarter. Unfortunately the high estimates
which have been made of his political ability were exaggerated.
When he took office after the short Bela Kun interim he soon
succeeded in repairing its ravages and those of the reaction
which followed it. It is to his credit that he cleared the im-
mediate circles around the Regent of a murderous crew of
hangers-on, but he was not energetic enough to go farther than
that. He had neither the will nor the capacity to introduce any
far-reaching reforms against opposition.

Once he had secured a little improvement he was content to
leave it at that. He was something like a lazy peasant who is
content to hold the reins and let the horse jog-trot on, quite
satisfied if the cart misses the worse pot-holes and doesn’t get
stuck in the mud at the side of the road. He was an honest man
and a man of good will, but he loved his own comfort too much
ever to be a vigorous guider of his country’s destinies. He was
happier on his estate with his guests around him than when
dealing with affairs of State. Hungary was hemmed in by Slav
peoples, and if Bethlen had one firm political conviction it was
that her interests demanded that she look to the Slavs rather
than to the Germans. This far-reaching political conception
was greater than his policy. Although Hungary owes something
to him, it is doubtful how the final balance sheet will look. It
was due to his lack of energy that the corrupt bandit Julius
Goemboes was not uprooted when opportunity afforded in the
beginning. Hungary paid dearly for that sin of omission;
Goemboes tied Hungary to Hitler’s chariot and she was
also dragged to disaster.

Both Goemboes and his very agreeable wife were my patients.

199

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

I treated him for kidney trouble and her for heart trouble.
Goemboes had a fat, clean-shaven face out of which, most
incongruously, a tremendous aquiline nose jutted like the great
beak of some bird of prey. When he came to power he proved
a very willing accomplice of Hitler, and as the dictatorial ruler
of Hungary he committed one foul brutality after the other.
His kidney trouble carried him off at a comparatively early
age, to the belated good fortune of his unhappy country.

CHAPTER XVIII

EINSTEIN

Amongst the many scientific men who are, or have been, my
friends there is one who out-tops all the others in stature, and
that is Albert Einstein. Since the revolutionary post-war period
when we first met we have experienced many happy days and
some difficult times, and our intimate friendship has now lasted
over a quarter of a century.

Some of the problems with which Einstein has dealt are still
the subject of dispute in scientific circles, but no one — no real
scientist, that is — disputes Einstein’s unique significance in the
world of science. However, it is not my object here to deal with
the work, but with the man. One day the definitive biography
will be written. On the basis of my long friendship with him I
feel that I can offer valuable material towards an understanding
of his personality. It has always struck me as singular that the
marvellous memory of Einstein for scientific matters does not
extend to other fields. I don’t believe that Einstein could
forget anything that interested him scientifically, but matters
relating to his childhood, his scientific beginnings and his
development are in a different category, and he rarely talks
about them — not because they don’t interest him but simply
because he doesn’t remember them well enough. If you ask him
anything about them he becomes uncertain and calls for his
wife, Elsa, who has lived only for him and his well-being and
who knows all there is to know and is more than willing to pass
it on in her agreeable Swabian accent. Unfortunately this last
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

passage should have been written in the past tense. Einstein’s
wife died in the United States in 1939. Other material has come
from his two step-daughters, but the most valuable material has
come direct from Einstein himself and from my long relationship
with him.

‘'You’re quite right about my bad memory for personal
things,” said Einstein when he read this chapter in MS. “It’s
really quite astounding. Something for psycho-analysts — if
there really are such things.”

Einstein is a keen observer and a sharp critic. His objectivity
in judging his own work is almost brutal. In self-analysis he
aims at the utmost truth without mental reservation. It is truth
he wants, and any form of deception is hateful to him. At the
same time he is fanatically insistent on his own independence,
even in conventional relations, and the least threat or shadow of
a threat to it is enough to disturb him. Even in married life he
rejects the corporative “we”. No one, literally no one, is to have
any right whatever to speak for him. In his Berlin home in the
Haberlandstrasse there was one room which was absolutely his
preserve; not even the cleaner was allowed in, and least of all
his wife. It was here that his work was done and his friends
received to discuss problems without interference. It was always
a matter of regret to his wife (he always referred to her as
“My old lady”) that she was unable to look after him and his
things in that room as everywhere else, but Einstein was
adamant: never mind the dust and disorder; it was the
independence that mattered.

He accepted his post at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Theoretical Physics only on condition that he was not expected
to fulfil any particular obligations for his 18,000 marks (about
3^^900) a year salary, and that he was to be left to do exactly as
he pleased. When he was asked what annual sum he required
as expenses for the Institute he couldn’t be bothered to make out
accounts and declared that he would buy all pencils and paper,
all he required for his investigations, out of his own pocket ;
there would be no other expenses. In fact he was always able to
arrange it so that he “had no institute on his neck”, as he put it.
He wanted no one to tell him what he had to do and he had no
desire to tell others what they should do. There was, in short

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nothing of the Fuehrer about him — and nothing of the sub-
ordinate.

When he needed assistance he paid for it himself. But that
wouldn’t do at all, so good friends arranged that a sum of
10,000 marks (about 3^^500) should always be in the bank for
him, and that whatever sum he drew the remainder should
always be made up to the original 10,000 marks. There was no
one for Einstein to thank or be beholden to, because the donors
remained anonymous, but in one of his writings on the magnetic
field theory he expressed thanks for the assistance the fund
(‘^der physikalische Fond”) had been to him in his researches.
When the Nazis seized his property and resources they also
laid hands on this fund though it was not his money.

Einstein was not troubled by the fact that he never received
an appointment at the University. He was, in any case, not a
professorial type at all, and he valued his independence more
than any formal position. • Thanks to the inaugural charter
granted by Frederick the Great, his membership of the Academy
gave him the right to lecture at the University whenever he felt
inclined, and he did so from time to time. On such occasions
the auditorium maximum was always filled to overflowing.
But his main contact with the University was maintained by
regular visits together with his colleagues Haber, Laue,
Schroedinger, Planck and Rubens, to a seminary every
Thursday afternoon at which there were free questions and
discussion. He would not have missed one of these sessions for
worlds ; it was one of the few regular obligations he had imposed
on himself. All his other relations with universities, including
Leyden and Madrid, left him complete freedom.

Dolce far niente was not foreign to Einstein’s character, and I
have often heard him say that it was more natural for a man to
laze than to work. But he had so much to do that he found
little time to indulge this side of his nature. He was always
busy, and certainly his brain was always at work. It was his
self-appointed task to solve, or approach the solution of,
nature’s physical mysteries. He saw problems in things which
for other people were obvious matters not worthy of a second
thought : what was the exact process by which the sand on the
sea-shore hardened when the water drained away? Why did
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the tea leaves in his cup go to the centre of the whirl when it was
stirred? He would seek the solution of what often appeared the
simplest problems, deceptively simple in fact, and in his search
he would often reveal truths which had previously gone
unnoticed.

On one occasion he was ill and I kept him in bed. It was at
this time that the very practical little invention of the ever-
ready note-block came on to the market, and I bought him one
for his bedside. It consisted of some wax-like substance over
which a sheet of prepared paper was laid, and on this notes
could be made with a sort of stylo. The writing disappeared as
soon as the paper was separated from the base. How rapidly
and summarily I solved the problem to my own satisfaction, and
what complicated thought and effort Einstein put into it before
he was satisfied !

There was hardly a simple every-day phenomenon which did
not arouse Einstein’s keen interest. I remember we were out
walking one day and it was rather windy. Suddenly he said :
‘‘Do you know, I wish I had even the faintest idea what wind
is”. And then he treated me to a dissertation on everything
wind might be. The ordinary mortal is completely satisfied
with an explanation of simple phenomena just at the point
when Einstein really begins to get interested in the problem.
And once he starts thinking about a thing he goes on to the end.
If he is ignorant of any point in some specialized problem, then
he shows extreme patience in listening to the information he
wants, and from his questions it soon becomes clear that not
only has he grasped the essence of the problem but noted
immediately any weak or doubtful points in the explanation
given him. Within a short space of time the questioner becomes
a source of information, the pupil becomes the teacher ; with a
brilliantly formulated synopsis he throws light on the whole
complex and provides valuable indications for further inquiry.
No one ever went away from him with empty hands, or with the
feeling that he had been bored with a question or had under-
estimated its importance.

I have always had the impression that topical questions
interested him most. When he answers a question there is

nothing of that bumptious display of authority met with only

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too often in men of smaller calibre, the type who give you not
their own modest opinions, but a revelation from on high.
Einstein’s own modesty is sometimes quite touching. If after
consideration he is not altogether satisfied with an answer he
has given, or has found some cause to revise it, whoever asked
the question can be quite certain of receiving a letter setting out
still further and more cogent arguments in support, or giving
the reasons why Einstein was wrong. And no matter how
serious the problem may be his manner is never ponderous;
he never exaggerates his own importance or takes himself too
seriously. He is always keenly aware that he is a fallible mortal
like the rest of us, and he always strives to put the matter as
simply as possible, avoiding all unnecessary verbiage. I have
numerous letters from him dealing with questions we have
discussed.

From professional interest I once asked him what he thought
was the reason why people who suffer from weak hearts always
find it more difficult to breathe against the wind. His first idea
was that the wind caused a rarification of the air round the
nostrils as though round a ship’s exhaust, thereby increasing
respiratory difficulties. A day or so later I received a letter in
which he declared that on thinking over the problem he had
come to quite the opposite conclusion, namely that it was the
condensation of the air as a result of the wind pressure against
the face which caused the trouble. I really don’t know how
great my debt is to Einstein for all the inspiration I received
from our long and frequent discussions, and when I dedicated
my book* on the heart and the blood vessels to him it was not
merely from admiration of a great scientific personality but also
in real gratitude.

One might imagine that it would be difficult to doctor a man
of such high pragmatical thought as Einstein, but in fact he
was a very good patient indeed, obedient and trustful, and
grateful for what was being done for him. As to the basis of that
trust, he once explained that he quite realized ^‘that our
primitive thought must necessarily be inadequate in face of
such a complicated piece of mechanism as the human body,
and that the only proper attitude is patience and resignation
* The Physiology and Pathology of the Heart and Blood Vessels.”

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supported by good humour and a certain indiiBerence to one’s
own continued existence”. There was thus no call for me to get
swelled head at the trust reposed in my medical abilities by the
greatest of all living scientists. But Einstein was always prepared
to give way to the knowledge and experience of others, and^^he
willingly carried out whatever instructions I gave, at the same
time watching the phenomena of his sickness whatever it was
and carefully observing the effect of my treatment. When on
one occasion he suffered from acute over-exertion of the heart,
it was our joint observation of the case which gave me the idea
of myocardiac congestion.

One might think that a man of such exceptional capacity as
Einstein would be intolerant and impatient with less gifted
people, but on the contrary. I know hardly anyone who is
milder in his personal judgments than Einstein, though, it is
true, exceptional stupidity can upset his composure, and then
the language he uses for his judgments is not borrowed from
any manual of polite speech. And there are occasions when the
enormity is so great that words fail him, and then the expression
on his face is enough.

Fundamentally Einstein is a man of great good nature, and
he is very unwilling to hurt anyone’s feelings. The sight of
distress always inspires him with a desire to help. He gives
away what spare money he has — ^he never has much — to people
in need of assistance. He could be a rich man if he wanted to,
but he attaches no importance to material possessions — regards
them, in fact, as something of a nuisance. He has always firmly
rejected any relationship which would bring him in money —
and limit his independence. The financial grant which goes
with the Nobel Prize (it is quite considerable) was made over
to his first wife and he never saw a penny of it. And if his
second wife, Elsa, had not been a very good housekeeper they
might often have been short of sheer necessities.

Einstein demands little or nothing for himself. He attaches
no importance to material things and he despises outward show.
His disposition is happy, and his happiness is almost in-
dependent of outward circumstances — in fact quite independent
in so far as they relate to material possessions. For him the
simple and the complicated are equally acceptable. As his

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

mind knows no limits so his body follows no set rules ; he sleeps
until he is wakened; he stays awake until he is told to go to
bed ; he will go hungry until he is given something to eat ; and
then he eats until he is stopped. I can remember his consuming
between five and ten pounds of strawberries at a sitting on more
than one occasion at my country house in Gatow. On another
occasion the famous Italian philosopher and staunch anti-
Fascist Benedetto Croce was a visitor there. The great Italian,
Einstein and I strolled round the grounds talking. It was the
time when walnuts were falling ripe from the trees, and as we
talked we ate them — for four hours without stopping. As Einstein
never seems to feel the ordinary impulses to eat, etc., he has to
be looked after like a child. He was very lucky in his second wife.

Elsa did look after him with extraordinary care and attention.
On one occasion when he had to go to Rio de Janeiro to give a
series of lectures she packed his case with everything he could
possibly need on the way, and when he came back she opened
the case and to her surprise found it had been beautifully packed.
Almost jealously she wanted to know who had taken care of him
so well — no man could have packed a case quite like that. For a
moment Einstein seemed a Httle out of countenance, and then
he laughed heartily and confessed he had never opened the case
at all.

The gift of laughter has been given to him in full measure.
There is nothing of the preternaturally solemn professor about
him ; he can laugh heartily, and he does. He enjoys a joke, and
he can often see the funny side of situations most people would
regard as utterly tragic, and I don’t mean utterly tragic for
other people, but for himself. I have known him laugh even
when a mishap or misfortune has really moved Hm. In-
cidentally, I have noticed the same phenomenon with other
great spirits — Lord Keynes, for instance. With them laughter is
not merely the reaction to the comically incongruous. Einstein
can also rid himself of disagreeable things as a wet poodle rids
himself of water. A shrug of the shoulders, and on to something
else. Life’s too short to waste on disagreeable matters, is his
attitude : there are so many more important things to attend to.
This may seem to suggest that he has no very deep feelings, but

he has; he can hate and he can despise — and both from the
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

bottom of his heart. It is difficult to make an enemy of him, but
the man — or woman — who succeeds is cast out for ever. I
remember how he positively hated the wife of one of our
friends, a great musician. He felt that the woman was torment-
ing a great artist and robbing him of peace of mind and
independence. One day when we were discussing some new
example of her shrewishness he declared: ‘"You know that’s a
creature I could kill in cold blood. I’d like to put a rope round
her neck and tighten it until her tongue lolled out.” And he^
made the appropriate gestures with his hands. I really believe
he could have disposed of the Xantippe in the way he described,
without his conscience ever troubling him.

As I have said, there were times when Einstein’s contempt
was too deep for words. The rich dye manufacturer Arthur
von Weinberg, a Frankfort intellectual and dabbler in the
sciences, wrote a pamphlet attacking the theory of relativity
and seeking to dispose of it ad absurdum by biological examples.
All Einstein ever said about it was a passing remark to me :
exclude the biological process from the theory of relativity is on
a par with saying that the theory of electricity mustn’t be
applied to pig breeding”. Beyond that there was no answer
from Einstein, though Arthur von Weinberg would have given
a lot to have had one, no matter how devastating it might have
turned out, but for Einstein his incompetence was below rebuke.

What raised Einstein so far above the other scientists I have
known was his imagination and fantasy. Once whilst we were
taking a stroll together I asked him what in his opinion was the
final aim of mathematics. He laughed and declared I would
have to formulate my question in a rather more simple fashion
before he could hope to answer it. I went on to say that I felt
there was a similarity between mathematics and fiction, in
which the writer made a world out of invented characters and
situations, and then compared it with the existing world.
Einstein considered this for a moment and then replied:
‘‘There may be something in what you say. When I examine
myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that
the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for
absorbing positive knowledge.” And it is quite true that his
genius is guided more by imagination than by knowledge.

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

I remember coming upon him stretched out on the sofa in my
country house in Gatow obviously lost in thought. I sat down
without talking to him, and suddenly he got up, stretched
himself and declared : "'You know, Ifeel I’m right, but I don’t
know it yet”. He was referring to the magnetic field theory
which was occupying him at that time. He finished his work
and presented his dissertation to the Acadeniy, only to wididraw
it a few days later. I am sure that had he let it go forward no
one would have discovered the flaw in his reasoning, or, at
least, not for a very long time, but he had done so, and he did not
hesitate for a moment to scrap the result of years of study and
thought, and start all over again from the beginning. When he
put down on paper the results of any of his labours he was
always very anxious to make them generally understandable.
Whilst he was engaged on this second tussle with the problem he
came to me one day and declared disconsolately : “I’m afraid
I’m wrong again. I can’t put my theory into words. I can only
formulate it mathematically, and that’s suspicious.” Of course,
this does not mean, as he immediately pointed out, that he had
ever tried to express a theoretical physical idea without a
mathematical formula. That was almost always impossible.

In explaining his ideas Einstein is unique. He requires no
very great knowledge on the part of his vis-^d-vis, merely good
common-sense understanding. The patience which Einstein
shows in talking to less complicated minds, often women and
children, is extraordinary. Many secondary lights find it quite
beneath their dignity to talk to people whose knowledge and
intelligence they consider inferior to their own, and to try to
explain things to them. With Einstein it is different. Whoever
goes to him with a serious question can be sure of an answer
couched in the simplest possible terms, and if there is anything
that makes him impatient it is empty intellectual blather. With
children he is extraordinarily patient, and he has a particularly
fine faculty for observation which stands him in good stead
with them. He could talk about things for hours with my two
youngsters, who, at the time I am thinking of, were three and
nine years old respectively. My elder boy got his first grounding
in astronomy from Einstein. Einstein sees what others would
pass over as unimportant. I have noticed that vain people have

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Science, Politics and Personalities

no intimate contact with children. Einstein is the opposite of
vain.

As I have already said, he attaches no importance to outward
show, and this applies in particular to clothing ; any old suit and
shoes will do as long as they are comfortable, and in clement
weather he likes best to wear a pullover, shorts and sandals. In
this rig-out he will sail for hours, and if the sun is hot enough to
make him feel the need of head covering, what’s betteF than a
knotted handkerchief? For him to have to put on evening dress
and generally smarten himself up to go out in response to some
dinner invitation is a minor torture. However, he subjects
himself to it when necessary because he is not indifferent to other
people’s feelings even when he does not share them. He feels it
a duty to go conventionally dressed and so he goes, but his
dislike of the whole business is one of the main reasons why he
so rarely accepts formal invitations. As might be imagined, he
spends little time on his appearance. How long his leonine
mane would grow if his wife didn’t trim it for him occasionally
I don’t know, because he would never spare the time to go to
a hairdresser in the ordinary way. His moustache was always
trimmed in a very amateurish fashion — ^whenever it began to
get in his way and not before. But shaving was a different
matter. He shaved himself regularly. He was not prepared to
spend time on beautification, but neatness, cleanliness and a
smooth face and chin were part of a duty to the rest of the world.
Yes, he was one of the simplest men I knew, simple and un-
assuming, but there was character in his simplicity.

The world, of course, has showered honours on him. They
have had as much effect on his original character as water on a
duck’s back. He has seen a statue of himself placed above a
church porch as though he were a saint ; he has seen the people
of Madrid kneel in the street when he passed. But it did not
flatter his self-esteem ; on the contrary, he disliked it. “Excessive
recognition is disagreeable to me because I feel too strongly the
suggestion and illusion behind it,” he once wrote to me. “All this
hubbub has nothing to do either with me or my work.” He has
been received by crowned heads with the highest honours.
Scientific associations have fallen over each other to elect him
an honorary member. And it has had no effect on him.

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

Once I asked him what recognition had really given him most
pleasure. ^^The recognition from my scientific associates/’ he
replied. Thus he was really delighted to receive the Planck
Gold Medal, which was struck as the result of contributions
from mathematicians and scientists all over the world and
formally presented to him as the first recipient by Planck
himself.

On the day the presentation was to take place Einstein was at
my house for lunch. After the coffee he lay down on the couch
and went to sleep. The presentation was at five. Just after
four he got up. ‘^They’ll expect me to say something or the
other,” he observed and sitting down at my writing-desk he took
the first scrap of paper that came to hand (it happened to be a
bill from my bootmaker, and he used the back of it), and began
to scribble. Over lunch we had discussed the crises experienced
round about 1930 in the theory of causality by the advance of
mathematical science. He scribbled away for about twenty
minutes and then we went off to the Institute of Physics, where
the presentation was to take place. The hall was full to the last
seat with famous mathematicians and physicists, Planck took
the floor and made a conventional speech : with what honour
and what pride he presented the gold medal to such a great
scientist, and so on. Then Einstein spoke: “I knew that an
honour of this sort would move me deeply,” he began, ‘‘and
therefore I have put down on paper what I should like to say to
you as thanks. I will read it.” And out of his waistcoat pocket
came my bootmaker’s bill with the scribble on the back, and he
read out what he had written about the principle of causality.
And because, as he said, no reasoning being could get on at all
without causality he established the principle of super-causality.
The atmosphere was tense and most moving.

I claimed my bootmaker’s bill afterwards and I kept it
carefully, but like so many other of my treasured possessions it
fell into the hands of the Nazi barbarians. I have an idea that
the noble Ambassador Gauss of the Nazi Diplomatic Corps
knows what happened to it. Einstein also nanded me the
Planck medal. It was of solid gold with a bust relief of Planck.
It was still in the case. He never took it out or looked at it again.
The honour from his scientific colleagues had meant a lot to
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

him, but he was not in the least interested in the gold medal. I
had it for years in safe keeping and finally I handed it to his wife
when the time came for Einstein to go. He has never even
mentioned it since. That evening Einstein, Slevogt, Gruenberg
and I went out to a typical Munich beer cellar to enjoy a
Weisswurst and beer. No further reference was made to the
memorable session.

Once when Einstein was in Hollywood on a visit Chaplin
drove him through the town. As the people on the sidewalks
recognized two of their greatest, if very different, contem-
poraries, they gave them a tremendous reception which greatly
astonished Einstein. ^‘TheyVe cheering us both,” said Chaplin:
“you because nobody understands you, and me because every-
body understands me.” There was a good-humoured pride in
his remark, and at the same time a certain humility as at a
recognition of the difference between ready popularity and
lasting greatness.

Elsewhere I have expressed the opinion that the criterion of
character is that a man should not lose his head when honours
and eminence come his way. In this connection I remember a
story Einstein’s wife told me about their reception in Tokio.
Einstein went to Japan at the invitation of a Japanese newspaper
proprietor to hold a series of lectures. It was shortly after the
first world war and Japan was ostentatiously anti-German out
of consideration for her Western European allies, but Einstein
and his wife were received with all honours and installed in
a whole suite of rooms complete with ornate balcony on the
first floor of one of the biggest and best hotels in Tokio. All
night Jong big crowds flocked to the square in front of the
hotel, many of them armed with camp stools, mats and other
comforts to help them through the night of waiting until
the great man should appear on the balcony in the
morning. They remained perfectly silent throughout the
night, but when the sun rose a clamour arose with it from a
packed mass of people who now desired to have their patience
rewarded.

Einstein went out on the balcony with Elsa just behind him.
As soon as they caught sight of him a tremendous roar went up
from a hundred thousand throats, and there was a hurricane

2II

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

of whatever serves in Japan for cheers of welcome and
admiration. Einstein was quite overwhelmed and there was
nothing he could do but smile and bow, but out of the corner
of his mouth he muttered to his wife : ‘‘You know, Elsa, I don’t
think any living being deserves this sort of reception”. The
jubilation continued unabated, and then Einstein muttered
again between his smiles and bows, “Elsa, Fm afraid we’re
swindlers”. And then after a further while of smiling and
bowing: “Elsa, I’m afraid we’ll end in prison yet”.

That wasn’t altogether a joke. Most people faced with such
a reception would have felt a crescendo of self-satisfaction
welling up in them, but with Einstein it was just the opposite.
It made him feel humble. That was more or less typical:
where pride might have been expected there was humility;
and where he might have been expected to bow he showed pride
and independence.

On one occasion Einstein stayed for quite a long time at my
house in Gatow on the Havel because it offered him the absolute
peace he needed to finish off a certain task he was engaged on.
As Gatow was outside the town limits the city fathers had
deemed it far enough away to harbour the town sewage farms.
Since then, however, the neighbourhood had become much ’
more populated and the presence of the sewage farms was
developing into a problem. If the wind sat in the wrong quarter
we would get a disagreeable whiff from time to time. The
question of removing the sewage farms was under discussion.
One day the Mayor of Berlin, Boess, was my guest at lunch, and
Einstein was there too. It happened to be one of those days
when the wind was in the wrong quarter, and we got an
occasional whiff of sewage. As First Citizen, Boess felt some
responsibility for the inconvenience and in some embarrassment
he asked Einstein whether he found the smell very disagreeable.
“WeU, it’s no perfume,” Einstein replied, “but there, I revenge
myself from time to time.” When Einstein left Germany for
America a group of foreign journalists accompanied him to the
train to see him off. The train was late and their leader began
to worry about whether Einstein would get his boat connection
in Bremen. It was at a time when racial distinctions were
already beginning to play a noisier role in the Reich. “Don’t
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

worry/’ said Einstein, “some Aryan will have reckoned it all out
properly.”

It is characteristic of Einstein that he never loses his sense of
humour no matter what the situation. He can laugh up-
roariously over the simplest things. If you happen to tell him
the same joke twice he will not interrupt you like so many
people who pride themselves on their perceptive faculties and
can’t listen (a sign of bad character), but listen tolerantly and
laugh with you again. He greatly appreciates mother-wit and
is as delighted as a child with his own witticisms, even when
sometimes a biting remark slips from his lips amongst friends.
He is certainly no prude, though with most thinking men he
rejects sheer filth, but he is not afraid of the broad story;
provided it has real wit it can be as broad as it likes. His
company is easeful.

Einstein needs recreation from work and he thoroughly
enjoys it, but not the sort which is associated with any to-do. He
prefers to amuse himself in the company of a few good friends.
He realizes, of course, that he has certain social responsibilities
and he does his duty although he knows that he is often
exploited. However, , he is prepared to let himself be used as
“table decoration”, as he calls it, when any good is likely to
result, and to let himself be handed around. “Feeding time at
the zoo”, is his favourite description for such formal .social
affairs. He dislikes late nights; they disturb his work the next
day. And he doesn’t care for drinking parties, though he is no
teetotaller. He likes a glass of good brandy, but he never does
more than sip it. One vice he certainly has, and that is smoking.
He is hardly ever to be seen without a pipe in his mouth, except
when it is a cigar instead. A good cigar is a real pleasure for
him, and its lighting up a ceremony. Officially his wife allowed
him one cigar a day, and outwardly he submitted to this
discipline, but in his room there was always a box of cigars kept
replenished by good friends in the innocent conspiracy to throw
dust into Frau Elsa’s anxious eyes.

Music, good music, is a necessity for Einstein. It is both rest
and recuperation for him. He has an extremely fine ear and
therefore only the best music performed by fine players can give
him pleasure. He has no time for what he calls ‘ "canned music” —

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

gramophone or wireless. Of course, since those days the
technical standards of reproduction have improved tremen-
dously and perhaps in the United States he has overcome his
objections. He is a fastidious lover of classical music, but he
abhors popular music, Puccini’s for instance. Bach on the other
hand can move him deeply. I have known very many pro-
fessional musicians, but there was hardly one whose feeling and
understanding for good music was deeper than Einstein’s,
who can talk with the experts as an absolute equal.

In a waterside pavilion at Gatow I had an organ, and
Einstein often went there on his own and extemporized, some-
times for hours on end. When this happened on Saturdays and
Sundays there was always a great crowd gathered outside on
the river in boats, canoes, yachts, etc., listening gratefully to his
remarkable performances. It was not mere curiosity that drew
them; no one knew that it was Einstein who was playing. It
was the sheer musical enjoyment his playing afforded. Not that
Einstein was a virtuoso ; he was not — ^to his everlasting regret.
His favourite instrument was the violin, and although he had a
whole collection of very fine instruments presented to him by
admirers who knew his tastes, his favourite violin was not the
work of any famous maker, but a simple instrument made in
Japan, and it was on this that he seemed to get the best results.
He was not a very good technical performer, but I don’t know
anyone who exceeded him in fervour and sensibility. He would
practise very zealously for his beloved chamber-music evenings,
but it was on this field that he felt the gap between desire and
performance most deeply.

His hand was not the characteristic one of the great artist. It
was rather long and yet fleshy with pointed fingers; quite
different from the bony fingers of Wagner or those of Franz
Liszt (there are plaster impressions in the Weimar Museum) or
from the hands of Kreisler, D’Albert, Orlik, Slevogt, Schnabel
and other great artists I have known. With those pointed fingers
of his Einstein could produce a fine enough tone, but he lacked
technical virtuosity, and, in particular, a fluent technique of
bowing. He is well aware of his shortcomings in this respect
and they often make him comically- furious, particularly when
he has to negotiate an unusually difficult passage. As I have
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

said, he is not a jealous or envious man, but in such moments he
does envy the great performers from the bottom of his heart.
However, his own difficulties usually end up in a burst of
mortified laughter.

The expression of his features in different moods is striking.
When he is himself playing (provided he is in no difficulties),
and particularly when he is listening to orchestral music, his
face is calm and serene, the eyelids are half closed and there is
almost a smile round his lips as he sits there enjoying the music.
When he is listening to some statement or explanation on a
scientific subject his expression is totally different. He usually
stands with his hands behind his back and listens with complete
concentration, his features relaxed, the head bent forward a little,
his eyes fixed on one point. And when he is thinking out
something for himself he is lost to the world as though he were
in a trance. In Benares, the town of Buddha on the Ganges, I
once visited the biggest Dagaba in the world, a gigantic
monument of brickwork built originally to house the hair that
Buddha is supposed to have twisted like a corkscrew round his
finger when deep in thought. When Einstein is deep in thought
he invariably and absently twists a lock of his hair into a curl the
whole time ; his eyebrows are raised and the sockets of his eyes
look enormous, whilst above them his huge forehead almost
shines in the aureole of thick grey hair. He has an unusual
head. At such times it seems as though his skull is very large,
but the impression is deceptive. The whole brain seems to be in
the sinciput, and to the great annoyance of all the artists who
have drawn, painted and sculpted his head it has practically no
occiput to balance the great mass of forehead. For this reason
hardly one of them has made a really good likeness of him.
They all seemed to have been dismayed by this great skull
without a proportionate back to it.

In another respect too Einstein’s appearance is deceptive. At
first glance he looks fleshy, but in fact his build is muscular and
quite powerful. He is capable of considerable physical effort
and there is nothing wrong with him constitutionally. In fact,
there has never been much wrong with him at all apart
from minor stomach troubles and once an acute dilation of
the heart brough on by excessive physical effort. He was

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

staying with our good friend Willy Meinhardt, the President
of the Osram Concern, in the Engadine. Einstein had been
called as an expert witness in a patent dispute before the
Supreme Court in Leipzig between the A.E.G. and Siemens.
Returning from Leipzig to Meinhardt’s place in Zuoz he arrived
rather late in the evening when he was not expected and he had
to toil up to the house on his own carrying a heavy suitcase.

It was quite a hard climb at the best of times and now it was
made much more difficult by slippery snow. It was more than
the fittest man could do with impunity and Einstein paid for it
with heart trouble which took him years to get rid of. But he
did get over it, and I believe it left no bad effects once it was
over. The P.T. adepts have declared that it w^ouldn’t have
happened if Einstein had kept himself in constant trim by
regular exercises. Up to a point no doubt there is something in
what they say. Einstein never took any exercise beyond a short
walk when he felt like it (which wasn’t often, because he has no
sense of direction, and therefore would seldom venture very far
afield), and whatever he got sailing his boat, though that was
sometimes quite arduous — ^not the sailing exactly, but the
rowing home of a heavy yacht in the evening calm when there
wasn’t a breath of air to stretch the sails. The Zuoz incident was
therefore, as Einstein freely admits, perhaps the last of quite a
series of over-exertions.

Einstein loves sailing ; sailing in his own boat, not being sailed
by someone else. When he takes a holiday he always goes to the
water if he can, and there he cruises around for hours with no
coming back for set meal-times ; he takes his food with him. He
loves the wind whether it is his helpful coadjutor sending him
scudding along in the direction he wants to go, or an obstinate
opponent who tries to bar his path and send him spinning
round where he doesn’t want to go. He is a good sailor and he
uses the wind or circumvents it according to the circumstances,
and few people have a better sense for it. Sailing offers him
relaxation and yet permits him to think. Shelley, too, felt that a
boat was not a bad place in which ‘'to solve the great mystery”.

When on holiday Einstein reads more than usual. He is not a
passionate reader, but, thanks to his great receptive powers and
the striking rapidity with which he grasps a thing, his all-round

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

knowledge is extraordinary. He reads poetry with pleasure and
he likes a good novel, but he will not waste time on things which
have no real fascination for him, and he has no particular feeling
for books as such. One might say that although there are
always plenty of books in the Einstein menage there is no
library. Fine editions and bibliographic rarities mean nothing
to him, and he needs no reference books. Of course, he is
bombarded with presentation copies, and innumerable news-
papers, magazines and scientific periodicals regard it as an
honour to put him on their free lists, but most of them go
unread. One day when a friend who was deeply interested in
natural science complained that he couldn’t afford to take in
the most important periodical on the subject, Einstein just re-
addressed his own presentation copy of the journal and never
saw it again — or ever missed it.

He doesn’t ‘Tollow” current literature, but he always seems
to be well informed, and his knowledge of the works of the great
writers and thinkers is profound. He has a considerable know-
ledge of history and his own very definite views on historical
development. I remember once we were discussing the giants of
various periods, and I asked him who he thought was the
greatest man of any age. Without hesitation he replied,
^‘Maxwell”.

Einstein has no patience or mercy for intellectual obstinacy,
deceit or hypocrisy, and he is not prepared to admit diplomatic,
or political considerations as extenuating circumstances. As he
is an uncompromising lover of truth, so also of justice. He hates
injustice as much as he hates lies, and the ill-treated weak and
the oppressed have always a firm friend in him. He is by
nature a peaceable and contented man and far from aggressive,
but he is a determined defender of the fundamental rights of
man. He will not compromise a principle and he has a dauntless
courage and preparedness to sacrifice his comfort or even his
life. When he had to leave Germany he first went with his wife
to Knocke on the Belgian coast. He knew very well that the
Nazis would murder him if they could. They hated him
fiercely and he was entirely worthy of their hatred. He took no
precautions whatever. We, his friends, were deeply perturbed
at the dangers he was running, and private representations were

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

made. The Queen of the Belgians was approached, and it was
due to her intervention that a guard of four detectives watched
over Einstein’s safety day and night as long as he was on Belgian
soil. Einstein knew nothing at all about it, and perhaps he
doesn’t know about it to this day. When he went to England
his friend Commander Locker-Lampson was also well aware of
the dangers which might threaten Einstein, and he too wats
going to take no chances, so he spirited his guest away to a
httle place near Cromer where I had the devil’s own job to find
him. We were all of us very glad when he finally arrived in the
United States and we could feel that he was finally fairly safe
from the attentions of the Nazi murder gangs.

CHAPTER XIX

EINSTEIN’S CAREER

Although i have known Einstein well for the best part of a
quarter of a century I cannot offer even a sketch of his career
without gaps, but only contributions which may prove useful
to a later biographer. Even so, I was very unwilling to risk
setting down things which might not be true, or might not be
quite true, and I therefore asked Einstein to look through these
two chapters, which he did in MS. It was a good thing he did so
because he was able to make one or two corrections and some
additions.

Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14th, 1879. I knew his
mother. She was a plump woman then, but she had fine
features and remarkable eyes which suggested high intelligence.
It was granted to her to know that she had put a genius into
the world, and she lived long enough to experience his world-
wide fame. Einstein’s first schooling was in Munich, where he
went to High School until he was fifteen. Later on the family
migrated to Milan, where the father opened a shop for the sale
of electrical equipment. Einstein remained in Italy for a year,
during which time he learnt Italian. Not that he is particularly
talented at languages. His Italian knowledge to-day he
describes as ^lousy”. He was then sent to Switzerland while his
parents remained in Italy, going from Milan to Pavia and

Science^ Politics and Personalities

back again. In 1902 the father died in Milan. At the age of
twenty-one Einstein took Swiss nationality; from the age of
fifteen until then he had been without papers, but in those
broader and happier days that was of no very great importance.

The Zuerich councillor Mayer has told me how Einstein’s
mother came to him and asked whether he could use his
influence to let Albert jump a class in view of his unusual talent
and the fact that owing to the movements of his family his
schooling had been a little erratic. Mayer arranged that the
boy should take an examination for special entrance into the
Zuerich Polytechnic, but young Albert was ploughed well and
truly. He admits frankly that it was entirely his own fault
because he had made no attempt whatever to prepare himself.
The result was that he had to go to the Cantonal School in
Aarau for the best part of a year and take his matric there. He
attended the Polytechnic from 1896 to 1900.

In 1902, at the age of twenty-three, Einstein published his
first work, and it brought him a modest position at the Patent
Office in Berne. As a result of this work, which had aroused
interest in collegial circles far outside Switzerland, various
people began to visit him; one of the first was Laue. Einstein,
it appears, was not easy to find. At last Laue discovered that
he was in the Patent Office, so he travelled to Berne and
approached the President of the Office, who proved to have not
the least idea that his staff included someone who was already
becoming internationally famous. He didn’t even know of
Einstein’s existence, but after looking up the personnel records a
minor official of that name was discovered tucked away some-
where on the fourth floor of the building. Laue climbed four
flights of stairs and finally found the room in wloich Einstein was
working. Einstein was discovered for scientific Berlin.

In 1905 he graduated regularly in Zuerich with a doctoral
dissertation on colloidal processes, a work which, in his own
words, ‘‘made some stir and has retained its essential validity
ever since”. This remarkable dissertation was at first rejected
by the academic authorities — ^purely on the ground that it was
not long enough. Einstein still quotes it as “a comic example
of academic obscurantism”. L4udwig Stein, Professor of
Philosophy, founder of sociology as a University course subject,

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

and a compatriot of mine, who was at that time Deacon of the
Philosophical Faculty in Berne, has told me the story. It is a
source of regret to him that Einstein’s admission into the
faculty was rejected under his presidency, though against his
sharp protest, on the basis of a report by professors of physics.
However, the honour of the University was soon restored at the
instance of the Zuerich University Professor of Physics Kleiner,
who wanted to have Einstein with him at Zuerich, so in 1907
Einstein was admitted. Once Laue had done the pioneer work
it was not difficult to maintain contact, and when Professor
Haber went to Zuerich thirty years ago at Althoff’s instance to
invite Einstein to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute he easily found
him at the Zuerich Institute of Physics, where he was then
working. Einstein accepted an invitation to join the faculty of
the German University in Prague, and it was whilst he was in
Prague that he wrote his first papers on the theory of relativity.

When he was quite young Einstein married a Serbian student
of mathematics and they had two sons. This relationship was
'^painful”, to use Einstein’s own expression, but it lasted from
1902 to 1914. He remarried in 1917 in Berlin during the first
world war. His second wife, Elsa, was a cousin, who had been
widowed and had two daughters, and with her he lived very
happily until she died in Princeton in 1939. She was a loyal
and understanding wife who did her utmost to smooth his path
and attend to his physical needs. She kept herself in the back-
ground as far as possible and never willingly took any of the
limelight that inevitably fell on him. It is no easy task to be the
wife of a great man. Many wives forget themselves and eagerly
push forward, to the embarrassment of everyone. Elsa was
nothing like that, and she did him good service as a Cerberus
to save him from the constant molestation to which a great man
is subject. Fame is something like a magnet; it attracts. But
unlike a magnet it attracts indiscriminately both the good and
the bad, the useful and the useless. Famous men are besieged,
threatened, slandered, insulted, led into traps — and worshipped.
There is no trick their admirers won’t get up to. The Cerberus
needs a great deal of tact, stoicism and even heroism to resist it
all. Elsa Einstein performed this task superlatively well.

Let me quote an instance of my own to show what famous
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

men have to put up with. One day a woman with a child came
to me and informed me that she was Einstein’s illegitimate
daughter and that her child was therefore his grandchild. I was
surprised, but the thing was not impossible and the woman was
extremely persuasive. I even began to see family resemblances
between Einstein and the child, an intelligent, wide-awake and
attractive little lad. Well, she convinced me, so with the
assistance of friends, who were also convinced, we set to work
to help her, found her a position and sent the boy to school.
Then I wrote a tactful letter to Einstein explaining the situation
and giving him news of his daughter and grandchild. To my
great mystification Einstein showed no proper interest, and so
in order to move his paternal and grandfatherly heart I sent him
one or two really clever and delightful little coloured sketches
the boy had made and a photo. There ! I thought, the features
of the boy will move him. I then received a letter telling me
that the whole thing was a swindle. It amused Einstein and
made me blush for months. He even wrote a poem about the
ridiculous incident, which follows for the benefit of those who
can understand it :

“Meine Freunde all mich foppen,

Helft mir die Familie stoppen!

Hab vom Wirklichen genug
das ich lang und ehrlich trug.

Doch dass ich noch unentwegt
Eier seitwaerts haett’ gelegt
Waer’ zwar niedlich anzuhoeren
Taets nicht andre Leute stoeren.” ^
signed:

A. Einstein,

Stiefvater.

When Einstein discussed his life and career with me for these
chapters we were greatly helped by his wife, who knew far more
about his youth and the details of his career than he did, but
some of the incidents come from other sources ; for instance it
was from Professor Haber that I heard the story of Einstein’s
call to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. The impression
made on both Haber and Planck by Einstein’s work was

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

profound^ so much so that in a conference with AlthofF,
Minister of Education, and Harnack, President of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Association, it was agreed to place Einstein in charge
of the Institute for Theoretical Physics which was about to be
founded. This was typical of the reaction of Einstein’s great
colleagues to his work and his theses, a compound of admiration
and understanding. Professor Lorenz of Leyden was another
scientist who was deeply impressed by Einstein. At that time
Lorenz was almost of biblical age, with a long and famous career
behind him, but he granted immediate recognition to the un-
known stranger and even wanted Einstein to be his successor at
Leyden University, but Berlin got in first. However, Einstein’s
deep respect for Lorenz persuaded him to accept a professor-
ship at Leyden, though without lecturing obligations. He is still
proud of this professorship, which was granted him for life.
He showed his gratitude and appreciation every year as long as
he was in Europe by going to Leyden to deliver a short course of
lectures. He greatly liked and respected Lorenz and he loved
the quiet old university town of Leyden, and when he returned
from these visits he was always very satisfied and content. At
the age of ninety years, shortly before his death, Lorenz had the
final triumph of successfully concluding all the involved
mathematical calculations in connection with the giant
engineering problem of draining off the Zuyder Zee and re-
claiming it for tillage. It was a tremendous task, and Einstein
was loud in his praise of Lorenz. On the basis of his calculations
the practical execution of the plan proceeded without a hitch.

By this time Einstein had settled down in Berlin — as he
thought, for life. However, his various scientific obligations
often took him abroad, and these journeys were a real pleasure
to him, for he felt himself at home everywhere, though he had
little liking for Prussia and less for Prussianism. But Berlin
itself he did like, because it was truly cosmopolitan. When he
was called to Berlin in 1914 he definitely refused to adopt
German nationality, but — ^he writes : ‘T accepted it in 1918 after
the general disaster at the urgent representations of my
colleagues. It was one of the follies of my life. Politically I
hated Germany from my youth and I always felt the dangers
that threatened the world from her side.” Although he agreed

Science^ Politics and Personalities

to take German nationality he always retained his Swiss
nationality, and the possession of two nationalities was possible
in Hohenzollern Germany. Non-Germans appointed to official
posts were presented at the same time with the doubtful gift of
German nationality. Such people were known jocularly as
Musspreussen^ or Prussians by compulsion. I also received
German nationality for the same reason as Einstein, but,
like him, I retained my own nationality as well, in my case
Hungarian.

Einstein’s personal circle was made up largely of South
Germans, foreigners and, of course, Jews. He has always been
thoroughly conscious of his Judaism, but nothing was farther
from his thoughts than to place himself at the head of any
Jewish racial movement, Zionism for instance, though he has
been pushed more or less against his will into this position.
A1 though it may seem strange to some, he was not a Zionist;
indeed, he was often a stern critic of some of the institutions in
Jerusalem, but he felt that faute de mieux he ought not to place
any hindrances in the path of the movement. He ‘Moes not
believe in the necessity for any special Jewish colonization”, and
he feels rather that ^^nationalism will soon be played out, and as
soon as human society has settled its economic affairs more or
less successfully no one will attach much importance to the
colonization idea”.

Einstein has been forced more or less by circumstances to
stress his Judaism. He is, and always has been, well aware of
the fact that he is completely Jewish, but this feeling is not racial
in the intolerant sense of that word we unfortunately know so
well to-day. He is well aware that Jewry could do with a lot of
improvement. His demonstrative attitude and the stress he has
laid on his Judaism have been a reaction to the injustice and
inhumanity suffered by the Jews, a protest against the brutal
stupidity with which a highly cultured people have been
persecuted. Einstein’s profound sense of justice has made him
a champion of the Jewish cause, and caused him to do every-
thing in his power to right their wrongs.

Einstein lived happily in Berlin amidst a circle of good
friends, but it must not be thought that he enjoyed any very
great reputation or popularity outside scientific circles. The

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

local councils everywhere are only too often in the hands of
minor politicians whose outlook is bounded by the parish
pump. Berlin’s local government was not much better. It was
in the hands of typical middle-class and lower-middle-class
elements. I had to explain at length to Boess, the Mayor of
Berlin, who and what Einstein was, before I could convince
him that his city numbered a really great man amongst its
inhabitants and that it was his Council’s obvious duty to show
some recognition of the fact. I am sure the worthy Boess was
not entirely satisfied with what I told him, and pursued his
inquiries further as to who this Einstein was. Apparently the
result was satisfactory, for he finally agreed with me that it
would be a good idea to acknowledge Einstein’s birthday by
presenting him with a house and garden as a mark of the deep
esteem in which he was held by the Berlin Municipality.

All this went on behind Einstein’s back, and there was no
very satisfactory denouement because the houses and gardens
on the list all proved to be quite unsuitable and, I must say,
quite unworthy for one reason or the other. With the help of
friends the Einsteins finally built themselves a small house on
the Havel with its own little harbour in which, on the day
they moved in, floated a beautifully built yacht (please don’t
think of Cowes and luxury : this was a small one-man yacht for
Einstein to do his sailing in on his own if he wanted to) . The
yacht had been subscribed to by Einstein’s friends. He was
oveijoyed with it; it represented the fulfilment of a dream. I
think it was perhaps the one thing that hurt him to have to
leave behind when the time came to shake the dust of Germany
from his feet.

Einstein’s continued presence in Germany finally became
impossible when an interview he had given to an American
journalist was published. The fellow had asked indiscreetly:
^'And what do you think of Hitler, Professor Einstein?” And
Einstein had replied bluntly : ‘'Look at the man’s face, and then
you’ll know what I think of him”. Now physiognomy is not an
exact science, but in this case its conclusions were accurate
enough. The empty look; the pale, puffy face; the putty-like
nose; the ridiculous black toothbrush moustache; the cow’s
lick over the forehead — ^no doubt whatever of the verdict: a
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

criminal type of low mentality. Whenever I saw that face it was
neither hatred nor even contempt which moved me ; it just
made me feel sick. I have often asked myself whether this
wasn’t violent prejudice ; surely there must be something more
than that in a man who was idolized by millions of Germans
as no man had ever been idolized before. I often did my best
to remain coolly objective and find something or other to
account for this shameful fact, but try as I would I never
did find anything.

I once went to the Sport Palace to hear him speak. I had a
seat right up close to the platform in a place reserved for the
Hungarian Legation, and for an hour and a half from this
point of vantage I closely observed everything that took place.
The production, so to speak, was perfect. Many a theatrical
producer could have learnt a trick or two from it. Everything
had been done to whip up the feelings of the audience to the
proper ecstatic level even before the performance started. A
collection was taken in boxes under the bright slogan ‘Tor the
one-way street to Palestine”. Brass bands played fortissimo,
big drums were flogged and trumpets blared. From outside the
high-pitched wail of police-car sirens could be heard, under-
lining the general suggestion of importance. The loud speakers
announced the names of prominent members of the party as
they arrived and each time a roar of applause greeted them,
varying in volume and length according to the popularity of
the great man. They arrived one at a time, obviously in order
to give the mob the opportunity of howling its head off and
keeping its spirits up.

Finally the vast hall was packed with something like ten
thousand people, and the platform was filled with Nazi
notables. This was apparently Goebbels’ cue, and he took the
microphone to inform the plebs in a dramatic voice that the
Fuehrer was on the way. Then every few minutes, in a death-
like pause as the bands stopped playing suddenly, Goebbels
announced the progress of the great leader towards the meeting.
After that the music blared out again. Then it stopped
suddenly and Goebbels excitedly informed the audience : “The
Fuehrer is near”. More music. And then Goebbels announced
in a voice thrilling with simulated excitement: “The Fuehrer

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

has entered the Sport Palace”. The whole audience was
reduced by this stage trick to a state of tingling nerves and
expectation, and then dead silence was broken by trumpets
sounding a fanfare. And there he was: a flabby, narrow-
chested, unimpressive little man with furtive eyes, his left arm
hitched into his belt and his right arm raised from the elbow
in a jaded sort of salute, not vigorously stretched to its full
length with hand extended, but just vaguely waving. He
mounted the platform. He was pale and obviously under stress,
but he had himself well in hand. Before him were many pieces
of paper with short, slogan-like notes clearly written on them in
letters inches high.

He began in a flat, monotonous voice and then gradually
worked up to breaking pitch. It was all being done with
a carefully studied microphone technique. The hysterical
crescendo was obtained more by leaning closer to the micro-
phone than by the power of his voice. He approached the
microphone or withdrew from it according to his requirements.
His sudden demagogic outbursts of rage at an artificial climax
were made to sound as though he were thrilling with pent-up
emotion, but that was not the case. He stood there just as flabby
and nerveless as when he arrived. He gesticulated only from
the elbow, and the upper arm remained close to his body.
There was no inner tension whatever. The fingers were not
stretched or closed into a fist. Everything was pure calculation.
Everything he did was carefully studied beforehand, thought
out and deliberately acted. The speech was not improvised.
He was not carried away by the surge of his own oratory. There
was not a trace of excitement. I left the wretched scene dis-
satisfied. Once again I had found nothing of the demon about
Hitler. He was the suggestion of his party bosses, just as the
film star is the ballyhooed suggestion of the producer.

And this was the pitiful wretch who forced Einstein to leave
Germany. I don’t think the great protagonist of relativity left
with any very keen pain in his heart. He was happy in his
little house at Caputh on the Havel, and he liked the company
of the artists and scientists who gathered around him, but
nothing could bind him any longer to this nationalistic,
arrogant, spiritually and morally degenerate Brown Germany.
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

He liked and admired the English, but it was the French
temperament which appealed most to him. In free America
he found peace again — ^but happiness? I hardly think so. The
English seem to him attractive and rather childish; the
Americans attractive and rather infantile. But it is the fantasy
of the French which really draws him. However, he would
feel at home anywhere in the world, because he is a true
citizen of the world — a Weltenhuerger^ in fact.

CHAP TER XX

FRITZ HABER, EHRENFEST, JOFFfi
AND OTHERS

Fritz Haber, the producer of artificial fertilizers from the
nitrogen in the air, of poison gas and of many industrial ersatz
materials, was accustomed to being widely consulted. He was
well informed either directly or indirectly concerning war
preparations everywhere. He himself was a pacifist and a
humanitarian whose ideal was to serve humanity, not aid in
its destruction, and he abominated war. Not only was he
a philosopher, and something of a poet as well, but as a
dialectician he was brilliant and as a talker fascinating. He
was a man of considerable fantasy, but he never left the firm
bedrock of the natural scientist. He suffered from diabetes
insipidus, and his sickness compelled him to drink over twenty
quarts of fluid daily. I knew him from the first symptoms of his
sickness, and at the time of which I am speaking it was not yet
acute.

Fritz Haber was a Jew, and consequently he was not par-
ticularly welcome in Berlin even in Wilhelm's day, so he went to
Karlsruhe instead, where he was engaged at the Technical High
School. The Berlin banker Leopold Koppel took over the
insolvent Auer Company, and his financial genius succeeded
not only in popularizing the inventions of Count von Auer,
but in developing the company to unprecedented prosperity.
The gas mantle and rare-earth ^loys soon found their way over
the whole world. Who is there to-day who hasn’t heard of the
incandescent gas mantle, the Osram lamp and the flint in his

«27

Janos, Th Story of a Doctor

pocket lighter? The young physico-chemist Fritz Haber had a
lot to do with this success.

Koppel was a man who disbursed enormous sums for
charitable and other enlightened purposes, a sort of Lord
Nuffield of his day, but his gifts were invariably calculated
with more than one object in view, and they served many
interests, including his own. He financed the founding of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry with a
donation of no less than a million marks and made it a condition
that Fritz Haber should be its director. With this he killed at
least five birds with one stone : first of all he had the satisfaction
of installing his coadjutor, Fritz Haber, in Berlin against the
opposition of the University stick-in-the-muds ; secondly he was
able to reward Haber for his very valuable services ; thirdly he
placed a new branch of science on a sound and generous basis;
fourthly he had his important adviser, Haber, always close at
hand ; and finally the Kaiser presented him with a high order
for his generosity to the cause of science. Both the useful and
the agreeable were well served.

The project, the execution, the organization and the
curriculum of the new institute were discussed by Koppel with
Haber and me on an automobile tour through South Germany
in KoppeFs new Benz roadster, a very unusual machine in those
days. Both of them did their best to persuade me to abandon
my medicine in favour of physical chemistry and to join the new
institute, but I refused. At that time, in 1910, physical
chemistry was still in its infancy, though its basis had been
fairly well defined by Wilhelm Ostwald and Svante Arrhenius.
Haber’s powerful imagination foresaw the future with extra-
ordinary accuracy. He experienced it in his brain before he
proceeded to put it into practice. His knowledge of general
principles was as sound as a rock and on it his imagination built
rapidly. He had little or none of that detailed knowledge which
can so easily weigh down the daring flight of thought. Despite
the enormous development of science there are comparatively
few facts which belong essentially to the equipment of the
pioneer scientist. The greater the problem to be solved the
less formal knowledge of details is necessary to arrive at its
theoretical solution. The smaller the problem the more detailed
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Science j Politics and Personalities

knowledge is necessary. A compendium is sufficient for genius.
All it needs is a knowledge of first principles. It is capable of
providing the rest for itself, of developing, or denying and
building afresh. In the dissertations of leading scientists on
highly important themes detailed bibliographies and a learned
apparatus are seldom to be found, whereas subordinate spirits
with less to say and that on a less important subject usually
wallow in bibliographical details and innumerable quotations
from other people’s work, Haber was a genius: he kept
assistants for any detailed knowledge he might need, much as in
the days of classic antiquity the well-bred Roman was always
accompanied by a highly educated Greek slave who walked
humbly in the rear and was there to be consulted on any point
on which his master required enlightenment : a lexicon of flesh
and blood ; a memory without a mind ; a statistical annual on
two legs. In this respect Haber always had what he needed to
hand. His own ideas were explosive like rockets.

Whoever has great ideas will invariably make discoveries
which others have already made in different ways. Two-
dimensional geometry will never approach the practical
significance of Euclidean geometry, but it is the loadstone for
the truths and errors of three-dimensional geometry. And
thus every new idea is a loadstone for the accuracy of ^ Tacts”
which have been previously established. And when a new idea
has been born clouds of scientific blow-flies descend on it, until
the origin is almost if not quite concealed.

Fritz Haber was a blond Silesian, the son of a well-to-do
father, who was President of the Chamber of Trade and leader
of the Jewish Community in Breslau. Men wffio went to school
with him have described Fritz Haber as being a fine athlete in
his youth. In his later years he was not even a caricature of his
youth. Time and an inexorable fate had altered him out of all
knowledge. The years, cruel sickness and hard work had taken
their toll : his dolichocephalous skull was quite bald ; his nose
had obviously lengthened ; he was short-sighted, which made
him peer; and the legs supporting his heavy body seemed to
have got shorter. His ha^nds were square, with short almost
equi-long stumpy fingers — the type of hand that, almost with-
out exception, all great thinkers and artists possess. His nature

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

was inclined to be Bohemian, and he enjoyed all tlie pleasures
of life to the full, but he included hard work amongst them. And
although in later years he often suffered from pain and
exhaustion, he did everything to prevent his troubles from
worrying others. During the final years when he suffered much
from angina pectoris not even his close friends noticed his
frequent spasms, for he steadily deadened them with nitro-
glycerine capsules, which he swallowed one after the other as
though they were sweets. He was a sensitive and in some ways
even a sentimental man, and he suffered deeply at the injustice
done to his fellow Jews. As a Jew he could not be an officer
(anti-Semitism in Germany was not invented by Hitler) and
in the ordinary way he rose no higher than a sergeant— quite a
brilliant military career in the circumstances, but during the
first world war they had to make him a Captain, but that was
exceptional promotion for very good reasons : the ruling clique
needed his services badly.

When war broke out in 1914 the German military authorities
reckoned on a short, sharp campaign, and their reserve stores
of explosives were sufficient to last until February 1915 only.
After the first few weeks of war it became quite clear that the
thing was going to last, and the short-sighted gentlemen of the
High Command were in a quandary because the British naval
blockade practically cut off the import of saltpetre from Chile.
The situation was desperate, and their first hope was a process
invented by another outsider, the Jewish Austro-Polish chemist
Caro, for manufacturing “potassium nitrogen”. However, turn-
ing this into explosives was a cumbrous and costly business and
it proved impossible to meet all the growing needs in this fashion.

Haber saved them — quite unintentionally. In the autunm of
1914 he turned nitrogen gained from the air into ammonia, the
fertile source of explosives, and changed the course of history-
then and now. Without that it would have been impossible for
Germany to carry on much beyond the spring of 1915. Haber’s
scientific object was not the production of explosives but of
artificial fertilizers from the air. It was a pet idea he was
putting into practice, and his aim was to improve the fertility
of the earth. The idea that his discovery might be used for
destructive purposes never entered his head.

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

Assisted ably by Carl Bosch, who was at that time Director
of the Baden Aniline and Soda Works, and an engineer and
technician of great brilliance, Haber succeeded in bringing
about the first amalgamation of nitrogen from the air and
hydrogen. It was done under high pressure with an electric
spark and a catalysator. Incidentally the actual successful
experiment was quite a tragedy for Haber and it took him a
long time to get over his disappointment. He had already made
many experiments unsuccessfully and had prepared everything
for this new and as he believed decisive experiment and had
then gone out to lunch. In his absence one of his assistants
performed the experiment. It was successful, and when Fritz
Haber returned there was the little heap of ammonia salts in
marvellous crystallized form at the bottom of the test vessel.
Manna had fallen from heaven and poor Fritz Haber had not
been there to see.

At the same time humanity had been granted a new boon
thanks to his genius. But the beast in mankind in the shape of
the High Command pounced on the discovery and used it to
evil ends. As soon as the experiment had left the laboratory
stage and the process was ready to go into mass production the
famous Leuna works were founded. The first buildings, with
enormous apparatus installed by Bosch, were ready within six
weeks — and the world war could go on — thanks to the
humanitarian impulse of a Jewish sergeant named Fritz Haber.

Haber was rewarded with the Nobel Prize for his discovery.
Now the conditions under which the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
is awarded provide that the candidate shall have made some
new scientific discovery of note, as Fritz Haber had done, or
have constructed apparatus permitting new chemical combin-
ations. Some years later, on the basis of the latter provision,
Einstein and I proposed Haberis loyal helper Bosch for the
Prize. It was granted to him, but he had to share it with
Professor Bergius, who had been put forward on account of his
process for the hydrogenation of coal.

The effects of Haber’s discovery were disastrous, but the use
to which another of his discoveries was put was in some respects
still more tragic : the production of poison gas. Like Wilhelm II
at the beginning of the war, Haber might have ejaculated ‘T

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

did not want this !”, and with far more justification. Once
again Haber’s aim was to assist agriculture, this time in the
negative form of a speedy and economic method of destroying
agricultural pests. He had already made many promising
experiments with halogenous gases such as chlorine, bromine
and fluorine, when the High Conunand and its experts
conceived the idea of using such gases for war purposes. Once
again the pacifist and humanitarian Haber was made into a
sort of inverted Mephistopheles : the force that always willed the
good but always created evil. He was an apostle of peaceful
progress with the aid of science. He wanted to enrich the
peoples with the aid of artificial fertilizers and more efficient
insecticides, and instead of that he unwittingly gave the beast
in humanity new ways to torture and to kill.

After a Directorial Board meeting in Frankfort-on-Main in
the summer of 1930 I motored back with Haber to my house in
Koenigstein in the Taunus. The clouds of crisis were already
gathering over Germany, and we discussed the possibility of
new wars. I mentioned one arm after another in order to find
out which in his opinion was likely to play thfc decisive role in
any new war : the aeroplane, the tank, the submarine, heavy
artillei7, poison gas. No, none of them. Finally I grew
impatient as the list was exhausted and declared petulantly:
“Well, the devil take it, what will decide the next war then?”
And Haber turned to me and reproached me bitterly for being
with the fools who thought new weapons decided wars : “The
next war will be won just like the last, by the side which has the
better and nobler ideas”.

One of Haber’s ideas was to pay off all Germany’s reparations
debts with gold to be obtained from sea water. He had made
considerable progress towards its realization, worked out the
various processes and constructed huge apparatus — ^when,
checking over his facts again, he discovered that unfortunately
he had made a decimal point error in his calculation of the
auriferous content of the water. It was a great shock to him
and it cost him a nervous breakdown. We went together to
Bad Gastein, where he gradually recovered. By the time he
landed in England in 1934 as a refugee he was heartily glad
that he had failed and not once again assisted Germany. He
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

was a deeply disappointed and embittered man, both sick and
tired, and he did not live long in exile. He died in Basle of his
old angina trouble and was buried there.

Unfortunately I never had an opportunity of meeting
Professor Lorenz of Leyden, but Einstein introduced me to
his successor, Paul Ehrenfest, and we became good friends. He
radiated good humour and cordiality of the real old Austrian
school, but he was also a brilliant scientist whose keen ty6
missed nothing, a man of quick perception and tremendous
ability. Usually the great intellects of the world are encased in
imposing foreheads, broad, high and nobly shaped. Paul
Ehrenfest was exceptional in this respect; he hardly had a
forehead at all, and a thick black mop of woolly hair almost
came down to his eyebrows. It looked for all the world like one
of those cheap wigs which are clapped on to the skulls of supers
when they represent Roman gladiators. Paul Ehrenfest
certainly looked neither like a man of outstanding intelligence
and ability nor like one who had been marked out for tragedy,
but in both respects appearances were deceptive.

He had a son, a half-grown lad whom he adored. The verdict
of the oculist was frank, brutally frank: blindness was in-
evitable. It proved more than the father’s heart could stand.
Paul Ehrenfest put a bullet through his son’s temple and then
through his own. The father died, but the son lived on — ^with
the visual nerves of his eye destroyed. Ehrenfest’s widow
returned to Russia, where she was given the chair of mathe-
matics at Minsk University.

Another professor of physics whose acquaintance I made
through Einstein was Felix Ehrenhaft, who held the chair of
experimental physics at Vienna until the Nazis came to power,
when they robbed him of everything he possessed, including the
great electro-magnet he had constructed, turned him out of his
laboratory and forced him to leave the country. He was the
amiable unworldly type of professor who lived only for his work,
at which he was extraordinarily capable, particularly in
experimentation. It is difficult to say in which respect he was
more reliable, as a scientist or as a human being and a friend.
He came from a medical family, and his father was a well-
known practitioner in Budapest. In the ordinary every-day

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JdnoSy The Story of a Doctor

affairs of life he was a good-natured pacific type, but in
scientific affairs he was a fighter of determination and bull-dog
persistence. When he had good reason to believe himself in the
right he didn’t care if the rest of the scientific world thought him
mad^ and no array of professorial might could intimidate
him. His pet theme was magnetophoresis. Magnetolysis was
opposed by all his colleagues — and he fought them all. I don’t
think there was ever a scientific experimenter of greater
conscientiousness and thoroughness than he was, and his
results and his facts were marshalled with such skill and at the
same time with such simplicity that anyone could understand
and test them. What remained in dispute in his work was not
his facts, but the interpretation to be placed on his experi-
mental results. In that his colleagues would not see eye to eye,
with him. He insisted that his measurements proved that the
electronic charge was not constant, as was generally assumed.
In this he had hardly a friend to support him and he made
many enemies.

Science is supposed to be unprejudiced and impersonal.
Science is, of course, but unfortunately many scientists are not —
or most of them are not, and an attack on what they are
convinced is true — ^particularly in fundamentals — ^invariably
arouses feeling rather than thought. Felix Ehrenhaft had no
easy task.

Another good friend of mine amongst the mathematicians
and physicists was the Russian Abraham Joflfe (not to be
confused with the Joffe who was first Soviet Ambassador to
Germany) . De Broglie was the first to discuss wave mechanics,
though in a rather confused form, but it was Joffe who made the
first thorough studies and drew the first sound conclusions on
the subject. Joffe has all the strong points of his nationality. He
is good-natured, cordial, modest and loyal. His intellect might
be said to work like a Yale key; just as the latter sets into
operation a whole complicated mechanism and solves the
problem with one movement, so his brain used the simplest
ideas to solve the most complicated problems. His thought-
processes are crystal clear in their operation, and it was always
a striking experience and a great pleasure for me to listen to a
discussion of physical phenomena between him and Einstein. I
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

had the impression from their talks that there is nothing so
complicated in the vast realm of human thought that it cannot
be made clear to anyone of ordinary intelligence. Such
discussions were never conducted in abstruse and complicated
scientific jargon, but always in ordinary every-day words and
examples.

I have always felt that simplicity was the hallmark of truth,
and that a theory which was difficult or impossible to explain
must be wrong. It is usually ideas which have not been thought
out to their logical conclusion which are difficult to understand.
The nearer the idea is to its completion, the nearer it approaches
to truth, the more easy it becomes to understand. I was never
more convinced of the correctness of this view than when I
listened to Einstein and Joffe discussing problems of physics.

On one occasion four of us were on our way to a favourite
little restaurant of ours: Einstein, Joffe, Gruenberg and L
Gruenberg and I were walking on a little ahead, and behind us
we heard the voices of Einstein and JofK rather more raised
than usual, and then Einstein burst into a roar of laughter. We
stopped and waited for them to catch us up to find out what the
joke was about, and Einstein explained: ‘Toor old Joffe can’t
make up his mind through which hole an electron will go if he
fires it through a lead obstacle with a number of holes. An
electron is indivisible, and therefore it must go through one
hole only. But which hole? And the solution is really very
simple : it goes through the fifth dimension.”

Joffe was entrusted by the Soviet Government with the
development of energy in Russia, and for his great work in this
respect he was awarded the Stalin Prize. He started off his
scientific life as a medical man, and his first researches concerned
olfactory problems. He assured me that all his subsequent work
derived logically from this first interest in the sense of smell,
' After the conclusion of his studies in Russia, Joffe went to
Wuertzburg to work under Roentgen. During the first world
w'ar he was professor of physics at the Petersburg Polytechnic.
After the collapse of the Czarist monarchy he threw in his lot
enthusiastically with the revolutionary regime and he served
the cause of the Soviet Government with unwavering devotion.
In return he was highly thought of by the Government and very

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popular amongst the people. It is typical of Soviet Russia that
scientists, poets, dramatists, writers, painters and composers
enjoy a widespread popularity reserved in other countries for
heavy-weight boxers, and such-like capitalist celebrities.

Joffe’s theoretical knowledge of physico-mathematical science
is enormous, and at the same time he is a very able practical
experimenter. I should say that there is no field of practical
physics which has not been enriched by his work. Of course, it
must be remembered that everything requisite is placed at his
disposal without cavil. He is in charge of about forty institutes
and has as many assistants as he needs. His intellect and his
activity are all-embracing. If apparatus is necessary to protect
low-tension wires from the influence of high-tension wires, if
thick cables must be replaced by thin wires to do the same work,
if a new process is required to impregnate material, or a new
method to induce quicker growth in trees, or the citrus harvest
requires improvement, or apparatus has to be built for the
production of powerful wind in a confined space, or an
accumulator for solar heat is required, or an investigation of
‘Vital rays” given off by dying plants to stimulate the cell
division — no matter what it is it first goes to Joffe and is worked
over in his mind, after which the practical experiments necessary
are made by his hands, and the final work is then completed
under his guidance. His manual dexteiuty is extraordinary, his
capacity for work enormous, and the elasticity of mind which
permits him to switch from one task to the next astounding.

One might imagine that such a tremendous performance left
Joffe time for nothing beyond his science, but that is not the
case. He never seems tired, never complains that he is over-
burdened and always has time for whatever he feels inclined to
do. He has time to live ahd enjoy it ; he reads a lot, and not all
he reads is deep and scientific. On the contrary, he is very fond
of Conan Doyle and Edgar Wallace. Sherlock Holmes is a
very real personality for him, and when he came to see me in
London his first wish was to go to Baker Street (an unsuccessful
pilgrimage performed by so many) to unearth the home of the
great detective. Joffe was disappointed to find nothing but a
respectable shopping thoroughfare; no doubt it has altered
considerably since Sherlock Holmes’s day.

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Science, Politics and Personalities

Joffe is one of those well-balanced men who can if need be
do without everything except the fundamentals of life — and
without complaint. But at the same time he is not the man to
refuse any innocent pleasure that comes his way. Another
thing — important from my point of view — ^he was a good
patient. He always did as he was told and I never had any
difficulty with him. War and revolution have separated us, but
our cordial relationship remains unchanged. His pupil Kapitza
was a living bond between us as long as he remained Director
of the Mond Laboratory in Cambridge. We used to meet
occasionally too, particularly as Joffe was chairman of the
Solveigh Committee and his duties took him to Brussels from
time to time. However, in October 1938 a congress of physicists
was held in London, and a young Russian mathematician and
physicist named Gamoff was sent to read a paper as the
representative of Soviet science. It appears that both Joffe and
Kapitza stood guarantors for his good behaviour and his
obedient return. But once outside the Soviet Union Gamoff
refused to honour his pledge and go back. The result was that
Kapitza, who was in the Soviet Union at the time, was not
allowed to return to Cambridge and Joffe has never left the
Soviet Union since. Not even the powerful intervention of a
Lord Rutherford could persuade the Soviet Government to alter
its decision and let Kapitza leave. Let me say quite definitely
at this point that no information on the subject has come to
me from either Joffe or Kapitza, and that the above version
is entirely my own.

CHAPTER XXI

THE BALTIC STATES, FINLAND
AND RUSSIA

In 1928 I went to Russia, and on the way I visited the Baltic
States and Finland, where I delivered a number of lectures
and used the opportunity to study the medical institutions of
Riga, Reval and Helsingfors. By that time there was no
longer any difficulty about travelling, and a regular sleeping-
car service went from Berlin as far as Riga.

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The Baltic peoples are a Slav-Teutonic mixture; in sentiment
they are Slavs and in intellect Teutonic. In their ways of living
they are wholly Russian, but their culture is German. The
Baltic States are a sort of watershed between European and
semi-Asiatic culture. These small peoples really are connecting
links between two continents. Many contradictory currents
meet in the Baltic States and innumerable eddies and swirls are
formed. As long as the Baltic Barons were politically dominant,
as they certainly were until recently, there was little chance of
any social changes, and a sort of virgin feudalism still prevailed.
In their hearts these peoples still yearned for old Russia, feudalist
Mother Russia, in whose bosom they played an important
intellectual role. Since they have had to stand on their own
legs they have felt insecure and unhappy. They firmly believe
they enjoy the benefits of a double culture, but I was sometimes
tempted to wonder whether it was only two halves.

From what is now Leningrad right through almost to
Mecklenburg, Germanic culture was fructified by Swedish
influence. This influence extends south as far as Vilna and
then along the Prussian frontier, and it is interesting to ex-
perience the razor-sharp line which then separates North-
German from South-German culture.

The Baltic States are rich in natural produce, but they are
unsuited to an independent political existence, and they have
always struck me as a caricature of big States — ^something like
megalomaniac dwarfs. They have to have everything the big
States have, whether they need it or not, and particularly an
army — and a navy as well if they happen to have a coasdine —
diplomatic representatives in every capital, and all the rest
of it. Throughout the twenty years of their independence not
an influential voice was raised to urge them to moderation in
their ideas. The Latvian Fleet was typical of what I mean. I
happened to be in Riga on the day when traditionally the naval
cadets took the oath to the Czar. After the revolution, of course,
it was taken to the Latvian President. It was still a great day.
The whole fleet consisted of two old cruisers, which, I was told,
were incapable of moving under their own steam and had to be
dragged and nosed around by tugs, and a number of ob-
solescent torpedo boats. There was, of course, an Admiralty, a
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

Lord High Admiral and his Staff, a training school, etc,, and
so on.

After the taking of the oath there was a celebration in the
evening to which I was invited. The well-born youth was
present in large numbers, as this was one of the rare opportu-
nities for social equals to meet. There were titles everywhere.
Countesses and Baronesses galore in ball dresses manufactured
with love and care out of all sorts of tulle remnants. The con-
trast between their poverty and their dignity was quite tragic
and a little touching. Vodka was the only drink and everyone
smoked Russian cigarettes, one after the other. A dance band
played and the floor was crowded. After midnight coffee and
cakes were served, and many of the guests opened up packets of
sandwiches they had brought with them. But there was nothing
wrong with their spirit, and the atmosphere was warm and gay.
The dancing couples enjoyed themselves hugely and there were
constant bursts of laughter. But by the early morning, as is
usual at Russian gatherings, a melancholy gradually descended
over the proceedings. The air was blue with smoke and heavy
with vodka fumes, and the sentimental minor key of Slav songs
dominated the descending mood until the guests hummed
rather than sang the melodies. Everything lay around in dis-
order on and under the tables, and in the comers the beauties
of the evening were nodding sleepily, their hair a little out of
order and their ball dresses a little creased and ruffled. Other
guests stared into nothingness and seemed to be mourning
bygone glories and sighing hopefully at what the future might
bring, whilst the orchestra played long-drawn-out gypsy strains.

The whole life of these little States seemed to me to be some-
thing like that evening : a dreaming of a happier past, a sleeping
through the present, and a hope for better times in the future.
There was something of the tragi-comic opera about it. It was
reminiscent of papier-mache and theatre scenes, something unreal.
I came away with the conviction that these little States were
incapable of a happy independent life. They needed a place in
some strong, efficient and homogeneous organism larger than
themselves if they were to live at all. Culturally and historically,
as I have said, they are Germanic ; ethnologically they are Slavs,
just as the East Prussians are, the Pro-Russians, Borussians,

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

Prussians. That is true of their whole mode of life, customs and
morals. That happy and yet rather tragic evening was in Riga,
but it was very little different whether the town was Riga,
Vilna, Reval or Dorpat. One little pocket State was jealous of
the other, one town envious of its neighbour, one family dis-
trustful of the next. And everywhere there was dissatisfaction,
and nowhere any real community feeling.

The most comic phenomenon of all was perhaps their
desperate search for, and insistence on, some sort of historic
justification, and, even more than that, some sort of historic
justification of their right to dominate others. Old ancestral
figures were dug out and dressed up as national heroes to
flatter the vanity of their descendants, themselves incapable of
making history or doing anything more than despairingly
marking time in memory of past glories.

The situation in Finland was very different. Here was a
vigorous people, with a real feeling of national unity and a
tenacious hold on their racial community which no periods of
slavery and subjugation had been able to destroy. In some
respects the Finns are like the Hungarians. Both peoples moved
from the uplands of Iran to the west, so to speak in the rear-
guard of the great migration of the peoples, both found them-
selves hemmed in between Slav and Teuton, both fought with
fanaticism and persistence for their independence, and both
have maintained their precarious European position for over a
thousand years. They seem both to derive from Ugrian ances-
tors, and to the philologist their languages are said to show
remarkable root similarities. This may be so, but I could find
no practical similarities which might have helped me.

The political histories of the two peoples are certainly
analogous. Both had comparatively short periods of freedom ;
generally they were subjugated without being absorbed. The
iron physical law of action and reaction applies both on the
political and the social fields. Peoples can be assimilated in
freedom, but through oppression they grow stronger. Both
Finns and Hungarians have a similar cultural history and both
are unable to recognize that their cultural value resides in the
fact that they are assimilators of still higher cultural influences.
Both now suffer from chauvinist blindness and are excessively
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

conscious of what they call their ' ‘cultural mission”. And both
are equally ungrateful to their teachers : the Hungarians to the
Austrians and the Finns to the Swedes. Both of them have dis-
covered an ad hoc national art, and both refuse to see that their
art was developed by modification from the arts of their
teachers. Of course, the teachers did not give all; naturally
there was interaction as well as action. The ridiculous thing is
only that these little people in their foolish megalomania are
trying to pretend that they owe no one anything and that
everything is the result of their own efforts alone.

The Finns are a peasant people. Even under Russian
political dominance their teachers were still the Swedes, and
their literary language was Swedish, as that of the Hungarians
was German. It was these two languages respectively which
were their keys to the world of scientific knowledge. But
gratitude amongst nations is like gratitude amongst individuals;
it is an embarrassing matter. Neither Finns nor Hungarians
are prepared to forgive their benefactors. Whilst I was in
Finland the hateful atmosphere of national chauvinism was
particularly irritating. As far as the nationalistic rulers of
Finland could manage it, every trace of the country’s Swedish
past, including place and street names, was being erased.
Nationalism dominated the school curricula; Swedish profes-
sors were banished from the capital into lonely country places ;
Finnish text-books were hurriedly printed in great numbers to
replace the old-established Swedish ones ; and the name of the
capital was changed from Helsingfors to Helsinki, and so on.

The Finns in their national pride were not satisfied with one
bite noir. Bolshevism, and Russia in general, was another one.
The word Russia itself was banned. Blind hatred and reckless
Xenophobia were deliberately inflamed, and that to a greater
extent than I had ever experienced it elsewhere up to that time.
The old intellectual classes had been driven out of public life,
and the peasants and the lower middle class ruled the roost.
To prove their title and show their energies everything in the
towns was ultra-modernized and over-proportioned. Of course,
much that was done was fundamentally good, because the
Finns, once again like the Hungarians, are a talented people.
The general impression of modern Helsinki, like that of Buda-

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

pest, is good. The buildings are fine, and the streets and public
places are well laid out, but just as in Hungary, everything lacks
proportion — these little would-be great people easily over-
reach themselves. They build up an impressive fagade, but
look behind it and the picture is very different. Nowhere is
this truer than in Finland and Hungary. The Houses of
Parliament in Budapest, for instance, are bigger than those in
London — and, of course, cost much more to build. But, on the
other hand, there isn’t a decent hospital properly equipped in
the place, and the same is true of other public institutions.

Despite the necessity of these sharp criticisms, I liked the
Finns, as I like, and more than like, the Hungarians, and I
wished them well. I only hope that they will soon get over their
hateful attack of nation^istic self-satisfaction and grow
naturally into their over-sized institutions.

After I had delivered my lectures in the University and before
the old-established medical association ‘‘Duodecim” I stole
away at night and left for Leningrad without farewells — ^it is
not considered the thing in Helsinki to talk about Bolsheviks
with anything but contempt and hatred — and as for going to
visit them. . . .

What struck me most on the way from Helsinki to Leningrad
was the general air of orderliness and the efficiency. The rail-
way carriages were in good condition and they were kept very
clean, but the station buildings and the uniforms of the railway
personnel were in a very shabby state. The railway buffets
used to be famous for their delicacies in Czarist times, but now
they were depressingly bare. There was absolutely nothing to
be had except boiling water for making tea, but I had no tea
and nothing to make it in. Fortunately a Dutch fellow-traveller
— more cautious, or more knowledgeable, than I was — had
brought a hamper of things with him and he took pity on me
and made me his guest for the journey. In contrast to the sad
lack of every creature comfort was the gay spirit of my Russian
fellow travellers. They laughed and they sang, and when the
halts at the stations were long enough they even got out and
danced.

The examination of passports and baggage was protracted
and tedious. Every little scrap of paper with printing on it was

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Science^ Politics and Personalities

closely looked at and turned over and over, and nothing was
let through. Every item of clothing was carefully listed. All
foreign money in our possession was taken away and the sum
and the currency noted in our passports. Anti-Bolshevist
propaganda asserts that all this care is merely a blind and that
no one ever sees his property again, but all I can say on the
subject is that when I left Russia everything was returned to me
without question. Those who systematically slander the
Soviet Union seem to forget in their short-sightedness that when
the slandered is proved innocent he enjoys more sympathy
from the just than he ever enjoyed before.

Whilst in Soviet Russia I was able to buy various commodities,
such as tobacco, wines, spirits and delicatessen, not available
to the ordinary Russian folk. Such goods could be purchased
only with foreign currency, which I was able to obtain from the
State Bank against the dollar sum noted in my pass.

The strictest control concerned the Russian rouble, and the
reason for that was clear enough. The counter-revolutionary
movement, whose centre was in Paris, had succeeded in
smuggling enormous sums in rouble notes out of Russia, chiefly
over the Persian frontier. They had been purchased at a
fraction of their face value, and naturally enough their quotation
on the European exchanges was very low. I remember when I
told the famous Russian actor Moskin that Russian roubles
could be bought on the Berlin exchange for 30 pfennig as
against a face value of 2*20 marks he laughed sympathetically,
and said how sorry he was for the Germans if that was all they
could afford. In any case, the Soviet authorities took drastic
measures against rouble smuggling, which was, of course,
intended by the counter-revolutionaries to undermine the
stability of the Soviet currency. I had already some idea of the
frontier difficulties and I had therefore taken nothing with me
but what I actually required : the things I stood up in and the
necessary changes — consequently I had no trouble.

Whilst I was in Moscow I went with my friend Migai, the
most famous baritone in Russia and a deservedly popular
artist, to a concert for workers on the fifth holiday (Sundays
had already been abolished). I have been to all sorts of official
and unofficial receptions in Soviet Russia, but I have never

243

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

seen a guest in evening dress. It is, however, another mark of
the great respect in which both art and the artist are held in
Soviet Russia that artists always wear evening dress. Migai
was therefore in evening dress. It was well cut and well fitting,
but the material, though originally good, was by this time a
little threadbare. However, the general impression was
excellent except that the shirt front was held together with
wire. Soviet-Russian industry had already got as far as tractors
and capstan lathes, but evening-dress studs were not produced.
I was able to present Migai with two artificial pearl studs of
very trifling value. They filled him with joy, and his gratitude
was enormous. To show me his thanks he demonstrated for me
the whole development of the Russian ballad from 1800 to
1920, and he got the conductor of the Grand Opera to accom-
pany him at the piano. His audience consisted of four people :
the Russian actor KatschalofF, Moskin, Migai’s wife and
myself. We sat silent and deeply moved in the candle-lighted
room and listened for three hours to one of the most wonderful
ballad concerts I have ever heard: from Glazounov and
Borodin to Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakoff.

Migai was a great artist. His voice was of tremendous volume
and incomparable tone, and produced from the powerful chest
of a Tartar. He had deep-set eyes under bushy eyebrows, a
high forehead, a mane of black hair, and very expressive
features which were never distorted by the effort of producing
his powerful notes. Equally popular with Chaliapin, his art and
his voice can be compared with those of the better-known
singer. Neither experienced any technical difficulties in produc-
ing his tremendous voice, and both were completely masters
of their material. Europe had an opportunity to know and
appreciate Chaliapin ; it is a great pity that it never knew Migai.
It is a source of great satisfaction to me to have had the privilege
of hearing him, and it will remain a happy memory.

When I finally returned to Berlin after a visit which lasted
some months, I found my chief source of irritation in the know-
alls who immediately discounted every word of first-hand
evidence on the ground that the witness, myself in this case, was
not competent to form an objective judgment on what he had
seen because the Soviet Government allegedly showed only
244

Science^ Politics and Personalities

what it wanted to be seen and concealed all the rest. This
prejudiced and very stupid objection was quite useful to the
Soviet Government, which never went out of its way to reply,
because it helped to conceal those things the Soviet Government
most certainly did not want generally known, namely the
secrets of its development. What the Soviet Government
did keep a very close secret was the planning and organiza-
tional structure of its industries, but what anyone with half an
eye who had anything to do with the Soviet Trade Missions in
any foreign country could see for himself was that no field of
development was neglected.

Up to the invasion of Soviet Russia by the Nazi barbarians
(and even for some long time after it) the distrust of the Soviet
Union was so widespread and the disbelief in its increasing
strength so firmly entrenched that no one in authority in other
countries considered it worth while looking into the matter
systematically. And yet it would have been easy enough to
control every move in Russia by an international exchange
of information and a little inspired deduction. The Soviet
Government was a master at playing oflf one purveyor against
the other, so that, far from exchanging information on matters
which interested them all, they played the Soviet Government’s
game of mutual concealment and confusion. A factor which
tremendously assisted the Soviet Government in its attitude
was the firm conviction of all other countries of their tremendous
superiority over the Soviet Union and their contempt for its
efforts. They treated Soviet Russia like a poor relation who
was expected to be satisfied with any old thing they liked to
palm off on it.

In the beginning, it is true, the Soviet Government was in a
very unfavourable position and often had to accept inferior
deliveries because it was not in a position to do otherwise, but
that gradually changed, and before long it began to insist on —
and to obtain — good value for its money; much to the in-
dignation of many of the purveyors, discomfited at the stopping
of their swindling tricks. Once the Soviet authorities were able
to obtain good machinery they began to employ highly paid
specialists to help them exploit their own natural resources,
and finally they obtained the very latest machine tools and

245

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

equipment, and on that basis they developed the necessary
labour and engineering technique to master them and make
their own. But the one thing above all others which gave them
an advantage in that battle was the burning interest their own
people showed in the great experiment, and the tremendous
labour enthusiasm which developed in consequence. Whilst I
was in Moscow I had a personal experience of this, I had been
invited to dinner in the house of my old friend Joffe. After-
wards we were to go to the opera to hear Migai sing in ‘‘Eugen
Onegin’’. We had finished dinner and were putting on winter
coats and galoshes in preparation for the walk to the Opera
House, when a deputation of young men was announced.
Joffe had already done a hard day’s work, and wondered what
it was they wanted of him, but after telling us he wouldn’t be
long he disappeared with the young men (all between the ages
of eighteen and twenty) into his study.

He was wrong, and we waited and waited. It was a good
hour and a half before he reappeared and the young men
departed. Joffe apologized but explained that after all it had
turned out to be a matter of some importance. The young men
had come to know whether he could give them any advice. It
appeared that the cosinus p of their factory was not so favourable
as that of a near-by factory, and they wanted to know why and
how they could improve matters. None of us knew what a
cosinus jS might be, and Joffe explained that it was the co-
efficient of expended energy and production. He told us that
he had examined all the details of their calculations, observing
incidentally that the young men had known what they were
talking about, and after they had answered all his questions and
he theirs, they had entered into a detailed discussion as to
what could be done to bring the coefficient of their factory up
to that of their rival.

That was typical of the Russian attitude wherever I went
and whenever I could speak with people on the subject. There
was not merely a deep interest in the work, but a positive
enthusiasm such as workers in other countries usually keep for
exciting football matches. Stachanov, who gave his name to
a whole system, a sort of commando system of labour, was not
merely an individual, he was a type. Of course, the Russian
246

Science^ Politics and Personalities

workers were perfectly well aware that like all other industrial
workers they were "'links in a chain” or "cogs in a wheel”, but
they were links and cogs with a personal feeling of responsibility,
and it was their chain and their wheel whose frictionless func-
tioning was involved.

Even in Czarist days the Russian people were essentially
democratic in their feelings. I nowhere met less snobbery than
in autocratic aristocratic Russia or more than in democratic
France, The Russian has always had a desire to be a somebody
on the basis of his own performance rather than through an
accident of birth or by some trick or swindle. The cardinal
failing of the old Czarist regime was its inability or refusal to
satisfy the deep-rooted Russian urge for knowledge. The first
important thing the Soviet Government set its hand to after
the seizure of power was to take over all the means of education,
create new ones as rapidly as possible, and throw everything
open to the people without distinction. It did not keep scientific
and cultural values locked up in a safe, but brought them out
into the light and put them into normal currency. That was
the real and primary basis for all the progress that followed, and
it was the chief service of my friend Lunatcharsky to have
recognized this and acted on it.

In an astoundingly short space of time Lunatcharsky, who was
then People’s Commissar for Education, succeeded in reducing
the proportion of illiteracy in Russia from 70 per cent to 5 per
cent with the result that the urge for knowledge burst all dams
and everything printed, even in millions of copies, was snapped
up almost as soon as it came off the press. I have known a
text-book on pig breeding to sell two million copies within
eight days of publication. The reform of the old Russian
alphabet, including the abolition of certain surplus letters, did
much to facilitate the new learning. I was told that this reform
cost the Government a hundred million roubles to put through,
but it proved to be worth every penny, or rather, every kopeck,
of it. But just what the apparently minor changes involved in
practice was not seen until the reform was well under way.

Whilst I was in Soviet Russia the rudimentary developments
which flowered later on were already visible. It is quite clear
that this tremendous development could not possibly proceed

247

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

without friction and difficulties of all kinds : some caused by the
sabotage of counter-revolutionary elements, others implicit in
the magnitude of the task itself and in the ordinary human
failings of those who set themselves to carry it out. But all these
difficulties were spots on the sun ; big spots sometimes if you
like, and they gave hostile critics something to criticize and
grumblers something to grumble about. Whilst I was in Russia
I saw important physiological experiments held up for want of
the simplest and commonest things; on one occasion, for
instance, there was no magnesium sulphate (better known as
Carlsbad salts) to be found anywhere. On another occasion an
important electro magnetic invention was held up for want of
a steel plate of a certain size. And when I finally returned to
Berlin one of my first tasks was to buy a quantity of prepared
reeds and send them off to Moscow in order that the clarinets
and oboes of the Grand Opera House could blow sweetly again.

To-day the magnitude of the development which took place
despite all these minor — and many major — difficulties is no
longer in dispute; the worst enemy of the Soviet Power is
compelled to recognize it. But then it was something of an
experience for me to meet the well-known German architect
May and, in reply to my amiable question as to how he was
getting on, to hear that he had just concluded his share in the
building of two new towns for 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants,
and that he was about to proceed with designs for even bigger
towns. Soviet Russia was the only place where they were doing
things like that. Such a new town, in this case a new quarter,
was the area over the Moscow River, with its great wireless
tower, an unusually beautiful engineering feat of hyperbolic
arches. Moscow was developing so rapidly even then that my
chauffeur, a Muscovite born and bred, easily lost himself, as he
had been away for eighteen months, and we drove hopefully
and a little vaguely around in the moonlight before we finally
found our way home.

But when I got home I learned from the wiseacres that the
buildings were so hurriedly and badly constructed, that they
would soon all fall down; just another bluff. Well, they didn’t
fall down, but it was certainly true that the outward details
showed signs of hasty work : doors and windows did not always
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

shut as well as they should have done; there were sometimes
cracks in the plaster and stucco; the plumbing wasn’t all it
might have been. But what were these things in comparison
with the fact that good solid housing was being made available
for larger and larger numbers of a rapidly increasing popula-
tion, and heated housing accommodation at that? True, indi-
viduals did not have the housing space Western Europe thinks
desirable; they lived in very cramped circumstances and their
privacy was practically nil.

In fact I think the most unfavourable of all my impressions
whilst I was in Soviet Russia was the state of housing. The
worst sufferers were the former middle-class families who had
been accustomed to live in some comfort and were now unable
to bring themselves to part with the household goods which
reminded them of other and better, at least more comfortable,
days. The rooms in which they lived were more like furniture
depositories than living-rooms. People slept on the grand
piano — and under it; pictures were stacked against the wall
because the new concrete walls didn’t take kindly to nails (if,
indeed, any could be obtained) . Clothing lay or hung festooned
around — wardrobes took up too much room. If a brain worker
was lucky enough to have a table all to himself for his work he
thought himself highly privileged. But that was about as far
as privileges went. I visited the homes of quite high officials in
Soviet Russia and found that the conditions under which they
lived were much the same; many of them had ' 'studies” which
consisted of a corner of the general living-room screened off by
a curtain.

The food situation was also very unfavourable when I was
there. Luxuries could be obtained only by foreigners with
dollars to spend (Soviet Russia needed foreign currency badly).
For necessities the Soviet housewives had to queue and wait
often for hours. Apart from the foreigners there were other
privileged persons in this respect: those who had the good
fortune to work for one of the trusts could buy at their own co-
operative stores, where supplies were much better. These
people represented a new stratum of privileged persons. It
seemed that equality was more difficult to establish than
fraternity. However, despite the very real difficulties (and with

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

certain exceptions in some of the big towns) men and women
generally did not look half starved, and certainly not the
children. The food prepared in public places was not very
appetizing, but it must have been nourishing.

Household goods such as plates, cutlery, glasses and washing
basins and so on were in very short supply, so much so that on
one occasion I was given soup in a plate that could not be put
down on the table but had to be held at an angle as otherwise
half of the soup would have spilled out.

Clothing, too, was terribly shabby. No new clothes were
obtainable and everyone wore what he had until it literally fell
to pieces. Odd shoes, and those much patched and repaired,
were a common sight, and very many people had no leather
footwear at all. Clothes were often more patches than anything
else. And as for shifts — anything warm served as a shift. And
at the theatre it was quite moving to observe the attempts the
audience had made to dress for the occasion. Blouses and
skirts had been made out of the last pieces of reasonably good
and cheerful material available ; even calico had been pressed
into service and decorated with bright odds and ends. And
the old shabby fur coats, and the moth-eaten tippets and the
muffs ! But the impression wasn’t at all comic ; one was moved
to sympathy — and admiration for the courageous spirit it all
showed.

An irritating factor which made things worse than they need
have been was the maldistribution of such supplies as were
available. Irkutsk was, I was told, on one occasion flooded with
more hooks and eyes than the inhabitants could have used in
years; almost everywhere else unfortunates were being com-
pelled to fasten up their shirts, blouses and so on with wire —
when they could get wire. The distribution of food and medical
supplies suffered similarly. Oh yes, there was plenty to grumble
at, but the general standard of living was not lower than it had
been. In Czarist Russia 95 per cent of the population had
endured a shockingly low standard of living whilst perhaps
5 per cent had enjoyed a high one. It was this 5 per cent that
was suffering now. The great majority of the population was,
on the whole, better off than it had been. But quite naturally
most foreign visitors had affinities with the 5 per cent and were

Science^ Politics and Personalities

f

particularly susceptible to their sufferings ; in consequence their
judgment was often biassed. This, I am certain, accounts for
many of the stories of widespread misery and poverty which
came out of Soviet Russia.

In startling contrast to the miseiy of those who had formerly
been privileged and were now worse off than the masses, was
the privileged position of the military and the munificence
shown to the arts and the sciences. I am quite certain that never
in world history was so much done for art and science as the
Soviet Government did — and still does. From the very begin-
ning artists and scientists of all kinds were treated as privileged
beings. And this applied not only to their standards of living,
but also to their liberty. Artists and scientists of renown could
permit themselves liberties which would have cost ordinary
mortals their heads. For instance, the physiologist and Nobel
Prizewinner Professor Pavlov invariably began his lectures with
a political attack on the Soviet Government. EEs students
listened to him politely and without demonstrations, and the
authorities took no action ; on the contrary they supported his
researches in every possible way and built him a magnificent
laboratory for his famous conditional-reflex experiments. In the
end this extreme generosity won over Pavlov and he expressed
his gratitude towards the Soviet Government for the unfailing
support it afforded all his scientific efforts, and he admitted to
me that he could not have hoped for a tithe of it from the old
Czarist Government.

Hov^ poverty-stricken the University of Berlin appeared to
me when I returned! For all current teaching and research
one clinic had a budget of 2,500 marks. Even a world-
famous scientist like Robert Koch was unable to obtain the
100,000 marks he needed for his important experiments to
establish the difference between the typus bovinus and the typus
hiimams of the tubercle bacillus, though these experiments
might have proved of fundamental importance in the struggle
against tuberculosis. As far as I know they never have been
carried out. And whilst I was in Soviet Russia I witnessed
Bucharin write out an order for no less than five million roubles
on an odd piece of paper which he had in his pocket for quite
a different purpose, to found a new institute of physics for

251

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

research into the problem of protecting low-tension wires from
neighbouring high-tension wires. The institute and the factory
for the production of the requisite apparatus were completed
within three months. The sales revenue from the apparatus was
then used to support and further other scientific institutes.

Scientific and educational training was furthered to the
utmost, and everything possible was done for the students.
Opportunities of learning were thrown open widely. Talented
students were sent to special educational centres and everything
was provided, including their board, lodging and clothing. All
available talent, whether much or little, was used to the full.
There were, for instance, no less than three Chinese universities
in Moscow. I asked Lunatcharsky the meaning of this embarras
de richesse. He grinned and winked at me over the pince-nez
glasses perched on the end of his nose. ‘Tfs like this,^’ he de-
clared. ‘‘Here in Russia we have 250 different races and
tribes, and their educational capacities are just as varied; in
consequence we need various standards. Students who aren’t up
to a first-class university go to the second, and those who aren’t
up to the second, go to the third ; you see, we need them all.”

In this way the best was given the best opportunity of making
progress, but the second best and even the third best were not
neglected. That is an ideal principle of democratic education.
But this revolution in education going on in Soviet Russia
aroused no more interest abroad than the revolution in industry,
and yet it was the fundamental basis of everything which has
since been achieved in what is now the Soviet Union. It was
recognized as such from the beginning by the founders of the
Soviet State, Lenin and Trotsky, and the principle was carried
into effect with all possible energy by Lunatcharsky.

Lunatcharsky was a good-natured professorial type. He was
a man of middle height with a rather protuberant belly which
wobbled as he walked, though he was not otherwise a fat man.
He had a rather long face with a large aquiline nose and a
short reddish beard. He was always neatly and even elegantly
dressed, and gave the impression that he was anxious not to
look older than absolutely necessary beside his younger and
attractive wife. He was a convinced Bolshevist and a citizen
of the world, whose well-being and progress it was his aim to
252

Science y Politics and Personalities

serve. But he was no impractical visionary and unconsciously
he seemed to operate according to Bismarck’s political motto :

all possible things take the available”. He was no bull-at-
a-gate character, but a cautious and thinking man of a high
degree of culture. One of his plays, '‘Don Quixote”, was per-
formed at the Berlin Volksbuehne, and showed him to be no
mean dramatist; one prepared to sacrifice form to content if
need be, but without falling into any utility rationalism. He
was no narrow-minded doctrinaire schoolmaster, and there was
no brutality in his revolutionary outlook. In discussion he was
always calm, diplomatic and extremely able. In his mode of
living he was far from puritanical, and when he was abroad on
Soviet business he gladly took the opportunity of making up
for the deprivations of life in Soviet Russia. I believe he came
in for a certain amount of criticism in the Kremlin on this
account, but he was too valuable a man to be disciplined very
strictly in consequence.

The main principle in his educational strivings was en-
lightenment and again enlightenment. The last veil between
mankind and knowledge of the world in which it lived was to
be ripped down. In many respects, however, his outlook was
over-simplified. What could not be explained by positive
science simply did not exist for him. When on one occasion
I discussed with him the synopsis of a lecture I proposed to give
he asked me not to touch on the subject of vitalism. The pro-
letariat has an exaggerated respect for pragmatic science, and
metaphysics are taboo. It was only after the era of Lunat-
charsky that vitalism became a permissible theme for discussion
in Soviet Russia. His genius for practical education made itself
felt throughout the whole educational system. In Soviet
museums there were no warning notices "Please do not touch”.
On the contrary, with certain obvious exceptions, the visitors
were encouraged to touch, to handle and examine, and to-
learn as much as ever they could from the exhibits. And in
every Soviet Museum there is a Suggestion Book for visitors to
jot down their ideas for improvements.

The Moscow Gallery of French impressionist paintings is in
a house whose walls are adorned with frescoes painted by Monet
himself. It is one of the finest collections of its kind in the world.

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

In the special Renoir room there is a wax impression of the
hand of the artist horribly crippled and distorted by rheumatism,
and a description of the whole medical progress of the case.

An experience of mine whilst in Moscow is characteristic
of the Soviet attitude towards art. I went to a performance of
‘‘Czar Fiodor Ivanovitch” at the Moscow Art Theatre in which
Moskin played the title role. When the church bells began to
sound in the wedding scene I noticed that the audience seemed
moved by some emotion. There was a nodding and a whispering
and a general movement went through the theatre for which I
could not account. Afterwards when I went to see Moskin in
his dressing-room I asked him for the explanation and he told
me that the bells had been the real bells of the Kremlin, and
that the costume he had worn was the real costume of Czar
Fiodor Ivanovitch lent by the historical museum for the
purpose.

Another example was connected with the first performance
of Schostakovitch’s opera “The Golden Age”. Schostakovitch
was twenty-two at the time and there was a cast of no less than
a thousand. The “ideology” of the piece was apparently a
comparison between the “degenerate rococco period” and the
vigour and heroism of young Revolutionary Russia. The walls
of the foyer were covered with diagrams showing how the five
months of preparation, rehearsal, etc., had been spent, includ-
ing the exact number of hours put in by the orchestra, the
actors, the singers, the ballet dancers, and so on, before the
piece was finally ready for its first performance. Every stage
secret was laid bare to the audience.

There is quite a lot to be said both for and against this sort
of thing. The theatre needs distance no less than painting.
When a critic once brought his nose near a canvas in his
examination Velasquez is reported to have retorted to the
critic: “I painted that picture to be seen, not smelt”. But let
that be as it may, in Soviet Russia another factor is involved.
In one of his moments of ascetic fanaticism Tolstoy had thun-
dered against the frivolity of spending so much time and money
on operatic performances when people were starving, etc. Very
well, the Soviet Government was anxious to show its citizens
that its artists, were hard workers like the rest, that the finished
254

Science^ Politics and Personalities

performance was by no means all, and that it represented a
very great deal of hard work and no frivolity at all.

Private lives cannot be led in Soviet Russia in the same way
as they can in the countries of Western Europe. The individual
is more subordinate to the community. But that is not all
disadvantage ; social institutions, old age pensions, care for the
family, and in particular for the children, labour compensation
and health insurance have all been developed in Soviet Russia
to a level far above the rest of the world. For instance, right
from the very early years of the Revolution working women
were paid for several weeks prior to a confinement and several
weeks after it, and the child was supplied with a layette by the
State.

Amongst the privileged beings in Soviet Russia were the
members of the O.G.P.U., as it was known at that time, the
former Tcheka and now the N.K.W.D. It is no new organiza-
tion in Russia, but the lineal descendant of the old Russian
secret police, the feared and hated Ochrana. Like the old
Ochrana the new O.G.P.U. leaves people in peace so long as
they do not meddle in politics — ^politics of the wrong sort that
is. I, for instance, was closely observed, and I was given to
understand that my hotel room was efficiently equipped with
microphones, but I was never interfered with in the least. The
army, as I have already indicated, represents another privileged
sector of the community. In striking contrast to their fellow
citizens, the men were excellently clothed and their discipline
seemed excellent. I never saw a soldier with a weapon, and
most of them seemed to be armed with brief-cases. They w'ere
either going to or coming from lectures. Their training was said
to be made up of 75 per cent theory and brain work generally
and only 25 per cent physical training, etc. Unlike the soldier
of the Czarist Army, the Red Soldier was not trained to be an
unthinking and obedient automaton, but to take the initiative
himself if circumstances seemed to warrant it. This principle,
unusual in those days, of training soldiers to think and act
independendy seems to have justified itself thoroughly in the
late war.

In my experience the Soviet Government never indulged in
a policy of what has been described as ‘‘building Potemkin

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

villages” — the smiling facades specially erected by the cunning
Potemkin for his imperial mistress Catherine II to approve
during her journey through South Russia. The Soviet authori-
ties had sufficient courage to do first things first and damn
appearances. Very often, I think, they carried this farther than
necessary. For instance, when I arrived in Leningrad and was
met by friends at the station and taken to the Hotel Europa I
had the impression that there was something even demon-
strative in the way outward appearances were neglected. The
town still bore marks of the fighting during the civil war, but
it was surface damage only and in a very few weeks an army
of cleaners, painters, whitewashers and handymen could have
restored the town to her old brilliance. Leningrad was like a
beautiful lady who had met with a street accident. Her clothing
was muddy, her hair disordered and there were scratches on her
face, but all she needed was a good brushing, a bath and a little
time at her mirror to restore all her old elegance. As it was,
first impressions were not generally very favourable for casual
visitors. The only shop in which they could buy freely — and
then only in foreign currency — ^was a State antiquarian shop,
where works of art could be purchased. And why there was a
shop (never open) on the Nevsky Prospect with an imposing
window display of evening dresses and other modern luxuries
no one could tell me.

The urban transport system was in a terrible state. The only
means of transport, apart from horse droshkies, was the tram-
car, though modern Leyland buses were just beginning to
appear in Moscow. From my hotel, the “Europa”, to the
various university and research institutes was too far to walk
and willy-nilly I had to take a tram. Every journey was a minor
horror. No matter what the hour was the trams were always
overcrowded, sometimes almost to the point of suffocation. You
got in at the rear as usual, but you had to get out at the front,
so that the moment you squeezed yourself into a tram that
looked as though it wouldn’t take another single person, the
purgatory of squeezing your way through to the other end
began. You were lucky if you had succeeded in getting there
by the time you wanted to get off, and when you did finally
succeed you were really exhausted unless you happened to be
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Science^ Politics and Personalities

an athlete used to gruelling physical contests. Considering the
degree of motorization in the Soviet Union to-day the dearth
of cars then seems almost incredible. There were very few
indeed on the streets, and they all belonged to very high
officials and statesmen, or to some institution or the other.

It was a tram journey such as I have described which brought
my visit to Soviet Russia to an end sooner than I had intended.
After a two-hour lecture in an over-heated hall I went back to
my hotel by tram. That same evening I stood up manfully to
a banquet with endless speeches (they did end of course, but
whilst they were going on there seemed no hope whatever) , but
in the middle of the night I w^oke up trembling with fever.
Everyone did his best for me, my colleagues and my friends, and
even perfect strangers. It proved impossible to get me into
hospital, or to find a nurse to look after me at the hotel. The
doctor could prescribe me medicine, but it could not be ob-
tained. The German Ambassador in Moscow at the time was
von Dircksen and his wife, whom I knew quite well from Berlin,
and they showed a friendly interest in my plight, and as the
German Ambassador to Persia, Count von der Schulenburg,
happened to be on his way back to Berlin from Teheran via
Moscow, it was decided that he, with the assistance of his
charming secretary, a Russian girl, should take me back with
them to Berlin, pneumonia and all. And that was the end of
my visit to the home of Bolshevism.

I have already suggested that the Soviet Government did
little or nothing to defend its reputation against the torrent
of falsehoods and slanders loosed against it, particularly in
countries like France, Switzerland and Hungary, and that in
some respects it even derived advantage from the actions of its
enemies. I had the impression that the Russians were rather
proud of their “bad reputation’’. The insulting word “Bol-
shevist”, for many the epitome of brutality, criminality and
lawlessness, was for them a high compliment. They were proud
of their “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, though “Dictatorship
of the People” would have been a better term, and “Dictator-
ship for the People” a still better one. There is no doubt that in
a social upheaval of the magnitude of the Russian Revolution
many severe and unorthodox methods are inevitable. Almost

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

any means seems justified to a revolutionary government if it
promises to achieve the great end. It must be left to the Soviet
Government to decide when the regime is sufficiently con-
solidated to render such exceptional measures unnecessary.

In any case, I arrived home firmly convinced that Bolshevism
had lost its revolutionary terrors, and that the period of evolu-
tion into which it had advanced need hold no fear for the rest
of the world. On the contrary, I was convinced then, and
everything which has happened in the tremendous years which
have passed since then has confirmed my conviction, that the
world may expect good rather than evil from that quarter.

258

PART TWO

THE THEATRE, ART, MUSIC AND
ENGLAND

CHAPTER I

SIXTY YEARS IN THE STALLS

There is certainly nothing hereditary in my deep iove for
the stage. Search as I will all I can find is a paternal great-
uncle who was an actor. But there it is : the stage attracts me
more than any other branch of the arts.

The dramatist conceives a world; the producer gives it
background ; the actor brings it to life. The process has always
thrilled me. The drama is generally regarded as the highest
form of literary art. A real work of art can only gain from
new angles of approach, and thus a dramatic work of art often
gains by its production and acting ; something new is added by
the new eye, the new approach. A classical piece need not
remain immersed in the shadows of the past in which it was
created. It need lose none of its greatness when a new eye
regards it and a new hand forms it. It is no sacrilege to remove
the dross of time from a masterpiece and present it in a modem
light. Clearly though, such attempts must always move danger-
ously between a proper deference and an impious despoliation.
The man who undertakes the task must be a near genius if he
is not to falsify the work of art and yet comply with the demands
of the modern stage. It is around problems such as this that the
modern development of the theatre has taken place.

In my sixty years of the theatre (more than that in reality,
but sixty is a nice, round sum) it was the resuscitation of classi-
cal pieces which remains in my mind as the most impressive
experience. As far as modern drama is concerned I think we
can already see fairly clearly what is likely to live of my genera-
tion : Ibsen of course, some of Gerhart Hauptmann, Strindberg,
Schnitzler, Tolstoy, Tchechov, Shaw, Wilde, Eugene O'Neill,
Pirandello, and a great deal of work by almost anonymous
French dramatists, and with them the dramas of Victor Hugo,
some of them in operatic form. Amongst the lesser-known
Germans there is Wedekind's ^Truehlings Erwachen" and
Carl von Sternheim’s comic satires.

The Duke of Meiningen, the founder and patron of a group

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of actors, was a pioneer of modern stage ideas. He was perhaps
the first to recognize that a dramatic work of art should not be
presented as though it had been written around one ‘‘star**
role, but as though it were one carefully integrated whole. He
was certainly one of the first to break with the old "'star’’
system. He dismissed one of the most popular actors of the day
from his troupe, and when asked why he dispensed with the
services of such a conspicuously prominent artist, he replied
that he had got rid of him just because he was conspicuously
prominent'. The ®‘Meininger”, as his troupe was called, estab-
lished the modern school of stage presentation, and Otto
Brahm in Berlin, Stanislavsky in Moscow, Antoine, who intro-
duced the new realistic era in Paris, and Reinhardt developed
the principles they first laid down in embryo. The stage of our
day has reached a high level of development, but we are still in
a period of experimentation ; the “final forms” are being sought
eagerly; they will not be the final forms when they are found.

The abandonment of the old forms was not a rapid process
and from my youth I can still remember the theatre in which
the pathos of the “star” before the footlights was the prime, and
almost the only, attraction. The footlights are about all I find to
regret in the old theatre. A little before the curtain rose and
when the “House” was already in a pleasantly expectant mood,
the “Footlights Man” would appear with his flame on the end
of a pole and perform his task with dignity, thoroughly con-
scious of his great importance — ^without him there could be no
performance at all. And night after night without fail when
the painting of the stage curtain glowed softly in the light of
the row of candles he received his meed of applause from the
delighted audience and acknowledged it with no less — often
more — dignity than the star himself.

In my opinion the footlights proper represent the one really
effective method of stage lighting and I believe the technique
of lighting will return to it one day; and I am not forgetful or
unappreciative of the work of Gustav Knina, a brilliant pioneer
here. Footlights throw the light from below upwards and that
is kindest of all to the actors ; the women look more beautiful
and the men more majestic. Lighting from above is not so kind.
And the gradual toning down of the lighting in accordance
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with the depth of the stage enhances the general artistic effect.
Excessive lighting on the stage is like excessive varnish on a
work of art.

My first memories of great actors go back to my very early
years, to a time when I was perhaps four or five. A brother-in-
law of my father owned a German theatre in Budapest. It was
a sort of experimental stage for coming talent, and on the whole
its level was not high. However, it was also used once a year
for the purposes of bringing Germanic culture to the rebellious
Magyars, and the propaganda experts of the Habsburg Mon-
archy, though they were not called that in those days, sent the
whole ensemble of the famous Vienna Burg Theatre to Buda-
pest for a guest season. This was usually during the summer
holidays, and after the performance the whole caste invariably
assembled for supper in some garden restaurant or other to the
strains of the inevitable g>Tpsy band. My parents were often
present at these care-free gatherings of the off-stage actors, and
as for some reason they found it impossible to leave me I was
taken along with them. I was never more spoiled in my life
than on such occasions. I was sweet little boy” it seems,
“with lovely black curls and big cute eyes”. Alas, time flies
and the sweet little boy is now an old gentleman, but then the
great actresses of the day — Gallmeyer, Wolter, Medelsky and
Hohenfels — ^vied with each other to take him on their knees
and stuff him with sweetmeats. The days were dull to me and
I lived for those evenings. The “lovely black curls” have gone,
but in one respect I have never changed : I exist by day and
go about my affairs, but I live at night. My best work has been
done and my most productive ideas have come to me at night.
It has never mattered to me at what time of the day I took my
eight hours sleep, and this unorthodox manner of living has
never seemed to affect my health unfavourably.

I can remember seeing the great Sonnenthal act with his
impressive heroic pathos. I can see him now as Carl Moor with
his long black brigand’s beard, and Mitterwurzer in the fiery
red mask beside him. The dramatic theatre in those days was
very much like the opera to-day. The audience waited im-
patiently for the “big scene” as the operatic audience waits
to-day for the big aria. The star would very obviously take up

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

his position before the prompter’s little pigeon-hole, adopt the
appropriate heroic pose, throw out his chest and peel off his
thunderous declamation for all the world as though what went
before and whatever might come after had nothing to do with
the matter at all.

I saw the two Salvinis and Ernesto Rossi of the same barn-
storming school. But then came Zacconi, and, above all,
Eleanora Duse, They were contemporaries, but under the in-
fluence of Ibsen they abandoned declamatory pathos and
adopted the newer, simpler, more vital and more realistic
methods. The ""'star” of Rossi’s day was like the one good jewel
in a tiara of paste. In fact, tlie ‘^star” of those days often be-
lieved that he could shine more if he were surrounded by
mediocrities. There is a mysterious mutual relation between
brilliance and mediocrity. A brilliant star does throw reflected
light on the surroundings as the picture of an old master in a
gallery lends an added lustre to less valuable works around it,
and the value of a supporting cast will be enhanced by the
presence of a great actor in its midst. The famous ‘'gentleman
art dealer”, the Hungarian Nemes, once confided to me that he
could best sell his second- and third-class stuff when he grouped
them around some masterpiece. It seemed to lend them an
appearance of greater value than their intrinsic worth.

As far as Sonnenthal, Salvini and Rossi were concerned I
witnessed some wonderful interpretations of Shakespearean
characters, but never the play as a whole. That was certainly
a drawback, but as against that I do not think I have ever
again seen Hamlet, Othello and Lear played so powerfully.
When I was a boy I had the cherished privilege of running
errands for Rossi. The man was all actor ; not merely on the
stage. His every gesture was studied from his benevolent con-
descending greeting to the way he put on his boots. He was
invariably in his dressing-room to start his make-up two hours
before the performance began. Never, not even with famous
film actors, have I seen such extraordinary care in make-up as
Rossi’s. Marlene Dietrich took about an hour; Laughton’s
Rembrandt was ready in half an hour. Rossi took two hours.
Every hair was in its place ; when he was the mad Lear every
straw in his hair and beard was carefully positioned ; when he
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The Theatre^ Ai% Music and England

was Othello the brown of his palms was carefully measured
against the darker brown of the back of his hands. Between the
acts Rossi stayed in his role, and even when the play was over
it took him some time to get back to normal again. Only
after the fourth or fifth call would he quickly remove his make-
up and then present himself to the audience with a spring for-
ward and a bow to show how young he was (when he was no
longer so very young). And the public would roar with delight,
naively surprised at the sudden change. That was acting when
the acting was over.

I first experienced the beginnings of the new unpathetic,
realistic drama in 1898 at the Alexander Platz in Berlin at
Ernst von Wolzogen’s little theatre UeberbrettL For the first
time I saw actors move about naturally on the stage and speak
their lines without pathos. They were mostly sketches of a very
mild social-revolutionary character. It is comic to think back
to-day and remember what in those days was supposed to be
revolutionary : the mere mention of strikes or the working-class
movement ; the mere mention of the elementary rights of man
seemed a threat to the existing order. Any pungent criticism of
existing institutions was a sacrilege. The poems of Otto Erich
Hartleben were like a clarion call. It is interesting to note that
the theatre was the first form of art to make a break with
convention.

The chief publisher of the new German literature was the
Hungarian Jew named Samuel Fischer, the founder of the
world-famous Fischer Verlag. His right-hand man and chief
reader was another Jew, Moritz Heimann, the brother-in-law
of Gerhart Hauptmann, and, as a non-Aryan, no desirable rela-
tive. The modern German theatres were almost all directed by
Jews. Ludwig Barnay (Braun), another Hungarian Jew, was
the director of the State Theatre for years. The Jew Abraham-
son (Brahm) was director of the Lessing Theatre. The Deutsche
Theater was under the Jew L’Arronge (Aron), and later Max
Reinhardt (Goldmann), a Jew from Pressburg in Hungary.
Two of his closest collaborators were the Jews Kahane and
Hollaender. The Hungarian Jew Ferenczy was director of the
Berliner Theater; his successors were also Jews: Meinhardt
and Bemauer. The Theater in der Koeniggraetzerstrasse was

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

founded and directed by another Hungarian Jew, Eugen
Robert (Kovacs). The Residenztheater was in the hands of
Geheimrat Lautenburg, a Jew from Budapest. The Winter-
garten was founded by another Jew from Budapest, Baron. The
Jew Freund was at the Metropoltheater. Victor Barnowsky was
director of the Kleines Theater. He was the only born and bred
Berliner of them all, but he was also a Jew. The list is a long
one, but it is by no means complete ; there is Jessner, Schoen-
feld, Haller, Friedmann, Rotter, and many other Jews. From
Brahm to Haller, they varied in level, but all in all it was to
them that Germany owed the supremely high level of her
theatre world — until the Nazis came to power.

These are the men who founded the tradition which became
world wide. I knew all the men I have mentioned, and quite a
number of them were my friends, including Brahm, Reinhardt,
Eugen Robert, Fischer, Heimann and his successor Oscar
Loerke. I was thus in a position to watch the development of
the German theatre at close hand, so to speak, from behind the
scenes. And when I speak of actors and their art I base my
judgments not on my own observation alone but on much that
I have learned in close friendship with such leaders of their
profession of Joseph Kainz, Alexander Moissi, Albert Basser-
mann, Rudolf Rittner, Werner Krauss, Paul Wegener, Max
Pallenberg, Gertrud Eysoldt, Lucie Hoeflich, Fritzi Massary,
Camilla Eibenschuetz, Lucie Mannheim, Leopoldine Con-
stantin, and others. What deeply satisfying memories I owe to
these troupers ! — ^from the stalls, behind the scenes, at the bar
or in the restaurant.

Generally speaking actors fall into the following well-known
psychological categories : the dramatic actors are hypomaniac
cheerful; the comic actors depressive choleric. As far as their
acting is concerned they are either intellectual or intuitive.
Albert Bassermann was the greatest amongst the intellectuals;
Moissi amongst the intuitives. When Bassermann played Hjal-
mar Ekdal in Ibsen’s ‘‘Wild Geese” you learnt in the Third
Act why he had seemed to be so uncomfortable in his dress
coat in the First. Hjalmar Ekdal had borrowed a dress suit for
the occasion, and it was too small for him. Bassermann acted
with subtle nuances. Gertrud Eysoldt, his female counterpart,
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

could hold a character under constant intellectual control
thanks to her own high intellectual qualities. On the other
handj Moissi, Else Lehmann and Lucie Hoeflich, to mention
only two or three of the best, were purely intuitive in their
acting. The incompetence and woodenness of these actors and
actresses at a rehearsal was enough to make a director tear
his hair out. They played through their parts like puppets. But
when the first night came and their audience was before them
they were inspired. ‘‘Theatrical blood’’ is the usual explana-
tion of such phenomena. It will do for want of anything
better. Interrogate such actors and actresses about their per-
formance, try to find out from them the secret of their success,
and they are tongue-tied; they just don’t know themselves.
Inspiration in the presence of an audience gives them their
capacity.

Under what general denominator — ^if any — can one bring
actors? In 1910 the first psycho-analytical congress met in
Weimar. There were about a dozen of us present. We were the
“World Congress”. It was here that I met Freud for the first
time. Whilst on the way with him to visit Goethe’s famous
Garden Pavilion I mentioned that very many of my actor
friends and patients complained of agoraphobia, and that I
should like to have his opinion on the point. Freud turned to
me a little impatiently: “You’re putting the cart before the
horse. People who suffer from agoraphobia become actors,
members of parliament, and generally people who display
themselves before audiences. Agoraphobia is the conversion of
their exhibitionist tendencies; the prostituted soul is afraid of
the street. First of all the inherited tendencies are there and as
a result of them the man chooses his profession ; not the other
way about.” I have had more than one experience which went
to suggest that Freud was right.

However, the question of the choice of profession by inherited
tendencies does not affect the division of actors into intellectual
and intuitive players. Unfortunately very often the critics are
the only people who know about an actor’s category, and he is
ignorant of it himself. Sometimes an actor feels it and tries to
free himself of his own limits, tries his hand at the opposite.
The real intellectual will always find a balance if he gets rid

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

of his involved reasonings, but heaven help the other sort if
they suddenly try to be intellectual.

Success is difficult to digest ; not many people can do it, but
in my experience actors are better at it than politicians. \^en
an actor meets with success he sometimes feels that he ought to
provide himself with a visibly proportionate wealth of intellect,
and he begins to think. It is a dangerous thing to do and it
suits few people. It must have been in some such mood that
the great Moissi began to turn over the deep mysteries of life
in his head. Unfortunately in his thirst for understanding he
smuggled himself into a delivery ward in the guise of a medical
student to observe the beginnings of life at first hand. He was
indiscreet enough to do it in Salzburg, the centre of Austrian
clericalism, and the explosion of wrath that followed was tre-
mendous. It was certainly no evil or frivolous motive which
guided him, but it finished him. He was never again allowed
to take part in the Salzburg Festspiele, and not long after the
unfortunate incident he died.

Moissi was altogether a remarkable character. He was not a
man of any very great intellect, but he loved to pretend he was.
His voice was of an extraordinary quality. It had a musical
beauty which affected some people like an aphrodisiacum neat.
Women flung themselves at him — and he made plentiful use of
his opportunities — until he met, fell in love with and married
Johanna Terwin. He worshipped her, and from then on he
was a model husband. She was a very favourable influence on
his career, and she managed the boastful and overweening
Moissi with great tact and discretion. It was Reinhardt who
discovered him and remained adamant when the critics almost
overwhelmingly rejected the over-sweetly romantic Italian
with the foreign accent. But for Reinhardt’s determination the
German stage would have lost Moissi, though Alfred Kerr, alone
amongst the critics, supported him. Instead of getting rid of
Moissi, as many critics noisily demanded, Reinhardt extended
his contract.

Strakosch was the famous elocutionist of the day and he took
Moissi’s accent in hand very successfully. Reinhardt was deter-
mined to prove that his judgment was right and not that of the
mass of the critics. He gave himself endless trouble with Moissi
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

and provided him with ample opportunities of displaying his
histrionic ability. Step by step the hostile critics were silenced
until in Beer-Hofmann’s tragedy “The Count of Gharolais’"
Moissi achieved a success which placed him indisputably in the
front rank of Germany’s dramatic actors.

Reinhardt’s contract with Moissi bound him for ten years at
the Deutsche Theater for a salary of 7,000 marks, but during
his free time he received as much as 100,000 marks from Louise
Wolf, the concert dictator of Germany in those days. Moissi was
one of those people who could not stomach success. It went to
his head. At the height of his fame he became moody, even
hysterical. On one occasion he burst into fits of laughter on the
stage and the curtain had to be rung down and the perform-
ance abandoned. On another occasion when playing Dubedat
in Shaw’s “The Doctor’s Dilemma” he declared indignantly
on the stage that he was as sound as a bell and he wasn’t going
to die of consumption to please any audience. It was impossible
to pacify him, and once again the curtain had to be rung down.
The fact was that Moissi had suffered from tuberculosis; he
had been treated in his sunny home town of Trieste for years,
and he lived in constant fear of the disease. In the end it
returned and took his life. At his funeral his great colleague
Albert Bassermann paid him the highest possible tribute.
Bassermann held the Iffland Ring which was presented yearly
to the best dramatic performer of the year. Bassermann took
it from his own finger and laid it in Moissi’s coffin.

CHAPTER II

THE STAGE, ITS CRITICS, AND ITS
FINANCES

The long heyday of the theatre in Berlin began in the
nineties, A number of dramatic authors led by Otto Brahm
founded the “Freie Buehne” in i88g along the lines of Antoine’s
“Theatre Libre” in Paris. Both these theatres produced new and
unorthodox plays independent of the tastes of the general public,
performing them before a limited membership. Subsequently

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

William Archer did the same thing in London with ‘"The Free
Stage”, which facilitated the arrival of Bernard Shaw,

Later on Brahm succeeded L’Aronge as Director of the
Deutsches Theater and before long Berlin became the premier
theatre city in the world. Nowhere else was there such a splen-
did combination of first-class acting and production, high
quality in the plays produced and wide selection embracing the
dramatic literature of many countries.

There is no doubt that the critics influence the development
of the theatre for good or evil. In Berlin criticism was severe,
almost violent. Did it further the theatre? The critic is often
popularly described as the man who knows everything better
but can do nothing better. But must he be able to do it better
before daring to say that it could and ought to be done better?
Lessing declared that there wasn’t a play of the classic Corneille
that he couldn’t have done better himself. He was wrong as it
happened, but Lessing was himself a great dramatist as well as
being a critic. He need not have been a great dramatist to
justify his criticisms, however. Dr. Johnson, I believe, has
settled the vexed question once and for all with his dictum on
literary criticism: “You may scold a carpenter who has made
you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not
your trade to make tables.”

Of course, it is an advantage always if the critic knows some-
thing of the technical details involved in writing and presenting
a stage play, but it is no more than that ; it is not an absolutely
essential condition. However, those irritating critics who
always demand one hundred per cent perfection measured by
their own standards are probably the ones who know nothing
about the technical and other difficulties. Some of them even
demand two hundred per cent perfection to balance their own
imperfections. However, all things considered I think we may
say that vigorous criticism furthers the theatre. In Berlin it
compelled the directors to produce valuable plays even when
there was no certainty or even likelihood that they would be a
box-office success, and it also more or less compelled theatre-
goers to see plays they would not ordinarily have gone to see —
it became the thing to have seen them. On the other hand and
in some places (and London is unfortunately one of them) the
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critics have not greatly furthered the theatre by being too
anxious not to spoil the directors’ chances at the box-office.

Some critics abuse their position. Abuses occur in all walks
of life, and probably no more often amongst critics than else-
where, but it is a regrettable fact that some critics are led by
their own vanity to try to shine at the expense of the play-
wright. To kill a play for the sake of a malicious joke, no matter
how good, is poor criticism, though a really good play will
stand it.

Objectivity is often declared to be the first principle of
sound criticism. I do not agree ; brilliant criticism will always
be subjective, though naturally it must be without malice and
it must come from a man with something to say which is worth
hearing. In Germany Alfred Kerr was such a critic. He had no
prejudices and he was not one of a clique whose shibboleths he
repeated. In consequence he had impassioned enemies and a
circle of enthusiastic followers. Apart from being an incor-
ruptible critic, Alfred Kerr was himself a poet, and he looked
like one : a shaven chin and side-whiskers, a waistcoat buttoned
up to a black silk stock with a tie-pin, and a high stiff collar
was his uniform as a priest of art and literature. He always kept
himself well away from the usual back-stage intrigues. He
could have known every detail of them if he had wanted to, and
he knew nothing. And what is more he hardly numbered an
actor amongst his acquaintances and he sought no intimacy in
the theatre world. During the long pauses of first nights I was
often, so to speak, his lightning conductor and kept people
away from him. He wanted to be influenced by nobody and
he took no part in the discussions at the bar. He was not inter-
ested in what the other critics thought about the play. Once
his mind was made up he would stand by his judgments. There
was no more determined opponent and no more enthusiastic
supporter. And he had an eye for talent. Few have done more
for dramatic literature and the theatre than Alfred Kerr. His
influence was almost decisive; his judgments in the Berliner
Tageblaity each passage of his criticism separated from the next
by Roman figures, had almost the weight of legal pronounce-
ments, From the beginning he stood in with all his might for
Ibsen, Hauptmann, Shaw and Schnitzler, and he recognized

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Janos, The Stoiy of a Doctor

the genius of Max Reinhardt at once and did not a little to
influence him. He refused to compromise when matters of
principle were involved. He had been a very close and intimate
friend of Gerhart Hauptmann, but when Hauptmann went
over to the Nazis, the mortal enemies of any form of civilized
culture, Kerr broke with him at once.

It was Otto Brahm who first produced the works of Ibsen and
Hauptmann. He did more than produce them, he fought for
them and established them in their right. His task would have
been much more difficult but for a few critics like Alfred Kerr.
From 1895 onwards Brahm’s productions of Ibsen were so im-
pressive and significant that they opened up a new epoch in the
German theatre. The new quality of depth and sincerity had
been unknown on the German stage since the days of Lessing
himself. His production of Ibsen’s ^"'Wild Geese” in 1901 was
more than a theatrical performance. It was a solemnity of deep
human emotions. Brahm had a magnificent band of actors at
his disposal: Else Lehmann, Emanuel Reicher, Rudolf Rittner,
Albert Bassermann, Oscar Sauer, Hans Marr, Gertrud Eysoldt,
Irene Triesch, and in the beginning Joseph Kainz and Sorma.
And Max Reinhardt must not be forgotten — ^Max, who in the
twenties had already made himself a reputation in the parts of
old men. I knew all these actors and actresses, some of them
intimately, and their friendship has been an unforgettable
experience for me.

They were more than actors earning their Hving. They were
devoted to their art, and many of them worked on until the
last moment and died practically in harness. Otto Brahm him-
self was one of them. Very few people knew just how ill he was.
A year before his death he probably knew that his stomach
trouble was incurable, but he worked on without sparing him-
self, and on many occasions I had to give him an injection to
make it possible for him to carry a rehearsal through to the
end. Oscar Sauer suffered from ataxia, which made him uncer-
tain on his feet and liable to stagger. He made a virtue of
necessity, and to those of us who knew the truth his great suc-
cess in Ibsen’s ‘‘Ghosts” when he played the role of Pastor
Mander, and in “The Doll’s House” when he played the r 61 e
of Doctor Rank and left the stage with uncertain gait, was a
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tragedy. The audience thought they were witnessing a master-
piece of the actor’s art. Yes, they were, but not quite in the
way they thought and none of them knew that behind the
scenes we had to do our utmost to get him on his feet again.

Rudolf Rittner was another actor who won a solid reputa-
tion. I remember walking home with him after his greatest
triumph in Hauptmann’s “Florian Geyer”. It was then that
he first decided to give up the stage and return to the land. He
was the son of a small landed proprietor, little more than a
well-to-do peasant, in Upper Silesia. Despite his big success it
was impossible to persuade him not to carry out his intention,
and after the last performance of ^Tlorian Geyer” he returned
to the farm on which he was born, ‘^to plant potatoes and
philosophize”. He had a massive head with a fine broad fore-
head and magnificent eyes, and a neck like a bull. His deep
voice had a vibration which set the nerves of the spine tingling
when he delivered dramatic lines. The impressive scene when
Florian Geyer stabs th.e symbol of German discord suiting the
word to the action three times brought the house down when
Rittner uttered the line *‘Der deutschen Zwietracht mitten ins
Herz!” The applause developed into ovations which lasted
several minutes. But Rittner left it all, turned his back on the
lights and went home to plant his potatoes.

One of Otto Brahm’s young actors became a director. His
name was Max Reinhardt. Brahm’s style was a deep and sin-
cere realism. With Max Reinhardt a new influence made itself
felt, a more romantic, a more colourful, a more decorative one.
It is quite possible that Max Reinhardt’s art would have been
confined to Germany but for the fact that a famous colleague
who happened to be on a visit to Berlin was deeply impressed
and ‘‘exported” one of Reinhardt’s productions to London.
That colleague was the famous producer G. B. Cochran, whose
gigantic production of Vollmoeller’s “Miracle” in the London
Olympia with the music of Humperdinck and Maria Carmi
in the leading role was a milestone in theatrical history.

In 1906, after Reinhardt had begun his career as a producer
in the hired Deutsche Theater, Stanlislavski and his troupe came
to Berlin. Brahm had begun his Ibsen work eleven years before
Stanlislavski, who freely admitted that he had learnt much from

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both Brahm and Antoine. With the assistance of Ellen Terry’s
son Gordon Craig and his new and revolutionary decor, Stanis-
lavski developed his own original and masterly theatre, but
Brahm’s with his own daring productions and his tremendous
and sincere realism owed nothing to Stanislavski and he pre-
dated him by many years.

The economic and technical side of Germany’s theatre de-
velopment interested me particularly, and I think this angle is
likely to prove instructive to lovers of the theatre in England.
The English theatre seems to be going in just the opposite
direction. In Germany Otto Brahm had perhaps the last real
ensemble theatre. Afterwards there was hardly one left apart
from the State theatres. Actors were engaged for individual
roles. The whole theatre world in Germany was a sort of
family and it was from this community that the required actors
were engaged ad hoc for a particular play. Only a few of the
more prominent players were engaged for longer periods with
higher salaries.

This state of affairs arose inevitably out of the development
of the repertory theatre to the ordinary run theatre : the one
changed its programme every few nights, sometimes even every
night, whilst the other played the same piece for just as long as
the public would stand it. With the repertory theatre a number
of plays had to be cut and dried in acting and presentation so
that they could be put on and performed at a moment’s notice.
For this the theatre naturally required a company of players
used to each other and the plays, so that perhaps one rehearsal
was sufficient for any of the plays in the repertory. With the
theatre which went in for long runs (or hoped the run would
be long) the new piece was always specially studied and re-
hearsed, and prepared from the beginning with special decor,
costumes and so on, and, of course, the most suitable actors.
With the arrival of the permanent National Theatre with a
constantly changing programme of plays and a permanent
company of actors the English theatre world will be faced with
similar problems.

There is much to be said in favour of either type of theatre,
and Germany, and in particular Berlin, tried out both and
every possible variatio/i of either. One particular strength of
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the German theatre world was its readiness to experiment.
Germany’s theatre-goers had been brought up by the critics to
expect something more than just the usual, no matter how
admirable the form, and they were therefore enthusiastically
willing to support any attempt to give them something new.
This willingness to experiment on the part of producers, the
encouragement on the part of the critics and the readiness of
audiences to give the experiment a chance are all necessary
conditions if a theatre is not to stagnate.

And the money ! Or rather the obtaining of it. The specula-
tions and the financial tricks which were resorted to in order to
obtain capital were many, varied and amusing. So much de-
pended on good luck. In that respect the theatre is one of the
legally permitted lotteries. I don’t know anyone, no matter
what his experience, who could say with certainty that a piece
was going to be either a howling success or a dismal flop. There
is, of course, the tried and trusted method of trying it on the
dog first. See what the provincials think about it. But pro-
vincials don’t always react to a play as the more sophisticated
public of a capital city does, and so the method is not entirely
reliable. I can’t remember an opera of Richard Strauss which
was first performed in Berlin or Vienna. Dresden was always
the place chosen for the premiere — and the Saxons didn’t
mind in the least; on the contrary they were rather proud
of it.

For the real theatre fans in Germany attendance at the last
full-dress rehearsal before the premiere was almost more im-
portant than attending the premiere itself. It was even possible
to make suggestions and have them listened to. But if one thing
is more true than another about the theatre it is that too many
cooks spoil the broth. I have witnessed Brecht and WeiH’s
modern version of ^‘The Beggar’s Opera” — a piece that has
justified itself as a dead certain success again and again — fall
utterly flat even with brilliant stars like Yvette Guilbert. And
all because the production had been entrusted to five well-
known producers to make quite certain that it would be some-
thing quite exceptional, instead of entrusting it to one. A
theatrical production, like any other work of art, must be all of
one piece.

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

I have often seen the light-hearted and only too willingly
credulous theatre folk quite certain of success and a long run.
Counting chickens before they’re hatched is a favourite pastime,
and, worse than that, they take advances on their salaries to
drink to the certain success. And then on the night of the
premiere the cashier is unemployed and there is no money for
their salaries. The financial difficulties encountered in and
apparently inseparable from the theatre world have given
rise to a lot of disagreeable phenomena in Berlin. Some moneyed
man on the make would buy up a certain number of the seats
for a certain number of nights at a fraction of the box-office
price and sell them for perhaps half the normal price. Such
cheap tickets would, of course, go, but very often the normal
tickets would be left largely unsold.

Generally speaking prominent directors could evade the
clutches of sharks of this type to whom the poorer man often had
to turn in desperation. The big and reputable men usually had
patrons behind them who were prepared to let their hobby cost
them a little. I have known quite a lot of such people. I won’t
mention their names here for if I did they’d get no peace.
They were a philosophical crowd ; if they lost their money, well,
at least, they had enjoyed themselves — and it’s so easy to lose
money without any compensating enjoyment. And sometimes
the attraction was a handsome actor or a pretty actress. Yes,
bricks were made with straw in Berlin too, though in some
respects the theatre was very much better off in Germany than
in most other countries because, as I have already said, the
Weimar Republic, so weak and contemptible politically, was a
tower of strength to the arts, including the theatre, and under
its most beneficent sway they experienced something very like
a Periclean era.

CHAPTER III

REINHARDT’S THEATRE

M!ax Reinhardt (Goldmann), a Jew, was born near Vienna
of an Austrian mother and a Hungarian father. He and his
works have so often been described that there is little I can
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add to this, so to speak, official picture, but perhaps my
knowledge of Max Reinhardt as a friend may help to throw
new light on an interesting personality.

His parents were poor people of no, what is called, social
standing. His father was a tailor in a small way of business
and he had no easy task to feed and bring up his numerous
family. Max was the oldest child, Edmund was the second born,
a daughter was third, and Leo fourth, and then there were four
others. Mother Goldmann was not easy to get on with, and
although I saw her practically every day for many months the
occasions when she was prepared to talk about Max’s childhood
were rare. As a child he seems to have been attracted to the
theatre and she can remember having discovered him play-
acting and declaiming before a mirror. After living for some
time in Baden the family moved to Vienna, and it was here
that Max really began his theatrical career. The fascination
of the stage did no good to his formal education, but as far as
real education was concerned he made up for it later with
tremendous ambition and industry. Whilst still a young man
Max went to Berlin, where he succeeded in securing a minor
engagement with Otto Brahm.

Max Reinhardt’s success was rooted in his own capacity, but
without the favourable surroundings it would never have had
a chance to develop. In that sense he was ‘‘lucky”. Just about
the time when the old century was thinking of giving way to
the new, Central Europe became theatre-minded as never be-
fore. Talented playwrights, and many of them playwrights of
genius, sprang up everywhere and helped the theatre to a new
birth. In England there was Oscar Wilde and Shaw, in Holland
Heyermans, in Belgium Maeterlinck, and, above all, in Norway
there was Ibsen and, though not quite in Ibsen’s class, Bjoem-
son. In Germany there was Hauptmann and in Austria Schnitz-
ler, in France Henri Becque, Brieux, Bernstein and Rostand,
in Spain Echegaray, in Hungary Franz Molnar and in Russia
Tchechov and Gorki. An extraordinary galaxy of talent and
genius, and they were all unorthodox and all, one might say,
traditionless — at least in the hidebound sense. The original
source of this brilliant phenomenon was the half-hidden Marxist
social revolution. The problems with which the new play-

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Wrights largely dealt were more social than they had ever been
before, and they derived from the inner crisis of society which
first began to make itself felt around the year 1900 in the
middle, not of an economic crisis, but of a tremendous period
of capitalist prosperity. The industrialization of Europe was
bearing rich fruit, and prosperity demanded its pleasures.
Theatres, cabarets, dancing-halls, variety shows and music-
halls shot up everywhere, and the amusement industry, includ-
ing the theatre, experienced an unexampled boom.

This was the favourable opportunity which Max Reinhardt
seized upon. With a group of his colleagues from the Lessing
Theater he organized a travelling company to play in the
theatrical close season. They went to Vienna, Prague and
Budapest. Amongst the company was a young actress of talent
named Else Heims ; not only had she talent but she also had
beauty. God may have created a more beautiful neck, shoulders
and back than Else Heims possessed, but I doubt if he ever did.
Max Reinhardt fell in love with Else and married her, and she
bore him two sons.

The tour was not only an artistic success — ^with such talents
at its disposal it could hardly have been otherwise — but also a
financial one, and it was repeated for a number of years. I
believe that throughout the whole period there was only one
performance which was a failure, and that was not merely a
failure but a fiasco, though even that was a blessing in disguise.
The company, of course, was German, so the hooligan followers,
chiefly students, of a certain violent Chauvinist named Ludwig
Bataszeky, demonstrated their patriotism by attending the per-
formance and liberally sprinking the theatre with stink bombs.
The stench of asafoetida made the auditorium untenable and
the performance had to be called off, but the favourable pub-
licity the company received in consequence made the rest of
the guest performances in Budapest a tremendous success, and
for years after that their coming was looked forward to eagerly,
and they played before crowded houses.

There was another incident of some considerable artistic
importance in connection with the* tour. In Prague the com-
pany made the acquaintance of an unknown young artist who
did a placard advertising their performance of Hauptmann’s

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‘^Die Weber’’. It was fundamentally a simple design: in the
foreground were heads of obviously shouting, singing, tri-
umphant men and women, and above them waved a flag. It
was nothing more, but it was done with such power and inten-
sity that its effect was striking, stirring and revolutionary. Done
in strong black and white contrast with just a little red on the
lips, it created a sensation and affected the future development
of the poster art as few things had done before or have done
since. The young man’s name was Emil Orlik, and after that
he was no longer unknown. He designed about sixty such
placards, though none had quite the success of the first, and,
indeed, could not have had. Perhaps the original designs of
those posters are still piously stored in the tailor’s workshop of
Orlik’s brother Hugo in Prague. They were there the last
time I heard of them.

But neither this travelling theatrical company nor his limited
opportunities at Brahm’s theatre satisfied Max Reinhardt for
long, and with a highly talented colleague, Valentin, he
founded a brilliant little cabaret where satirical sketches were
performed, usually with some amusingly barbed point directed
against existing institutions and in particular the pocket princi-
palities of Germany. It was a very small theatre and the stage
was pocket-handkerchief size, but it triumphed over all its
limitations and became a pronounced artistic success. It
tempted Reinhardt to extend. But means were still short and
the greatest possible effect had to be obtained with the smallest
possible expenditure. It was part of Reinhardt’s genius to find
the best possible collaborators. One of the most important of
these was a quiet little man with keen eyes who always listened
carefully to instructions, and then proceeded to carry them out
almost wordlessly. He worked alone, always armed with a sol-
dering iron, and with the restricted means at his disposal he
produced what few others could have done in his place. The
silent genius, for he was certainly a genius, was Gustav Knina,
later to become famous.

Without Knina the little company felt lost. If anything went
wrong, Kjiina was there to put it right. If the lighting failed
Knina restored it. If the scene had to be altered or re-arranged
Knina did it. He knew exactly what Reinhardt wanted and he

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Janos ^ The Sto^y of a Doctor

knew how to obtain it* Without exaggeration I think it can be
said that there was no problem of stage technique during the
past forty years whose solution was not due to Knina or to his
influence. I don’t know whether he actually introduced the
‘'horizon”, /.e., the concave wall of plaster closing the stage, but
he certainly established the best way of placing the reflectors
to secure the uniform lighting of it. The revolving stage in its
present-day state of perfection derives from KLnina’s work. As
an arranger of the decor he was unequalled, and he had z,
never-failing taste where interior decoration was concerned* It
was a pleasure to wander through the second-hand and anti-
quarian shops and markets with him. Amidst a pile of useless
junk his eagle eye would spot the one useful thing and bring it
to light unerringly. Many a pearl of art and craftsmanship
owed its resurrection to Knina.

When Reinhardt took over what had been tlie "Circus
Schumann” and turned it into the "Theatre of the Five
Thousand” it was the well-known German architect Poelzig
whose name appeared on the bill, but I know the enormous
part Knina played in the work. For instance, when the
"Grosses Schauspielliaus” was finished it was discovered to the
horror of all concerned that its acoustics w^ere so bad as to
render it almost impossible. And once again Knina came to
the rescue with a brilliant idea. The whole interior ceiling was
provided with stalactites and the rest of the decoration toned
in accordingly, with the result that the human voice was again
made audible in the great auditorium. Until his death Knina
remained one of Reinhardt’s closest and most loyal collabor-
ators.

I have already said that it was part of Reinhardt’s genius to
group the best possible array of talents around himself, each
devoted to the aim of the whole and willing and anxious to do
everytliing possible to carry out Reinhardt’s ideas and make the
thing a success. It is significant, too, that Max Reinhardt was
idolized by his personnel. There was nothing they would not
do and no lengths to which they would not go to serve him and
his ideas. A sort of artistic family grew up around him. Every-
body knew everybody else by his Christian name, and Rein-
hardt was just Max to them all. For the old guard he remained
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Max to the end, though later on newcomers gave him his
formal title of ‘Trofessor’\

When Reinhardt’s services to the theatre stood beyond ail
dispute some official recognition was suggested; the bestowal
of a titular professorship was the usual way. In Prussia the
matter lay in the hands of the Ministry of Culture. The Minister
was a dyed-in-the-wool junker of the old school with the comic
name of Trott zu Solz, which was generally turned into the far
jBrom complimentary ^‘Salztrottel”, '"Trottel” meaning block-
head. It was unheard of that a theatrical producer without
formal academic qualifications should be given even a titular
professorship, so Salztrottel, who thoroughly deserved his nick-
name, refused to put Reinhardt’s name before the Kaiser in
the Honours List. Quite apart from everything else, a fellow
who produced modern and unorthodox plays was politically
unreliable. And thus it looked as though the man who had
done more than any other to raise the artistic level of Berlin’s
theatre and had brought hundreds of thousands of interested
visitors to Germany would have to go without official recog-
nition. However, one of the duodecimo princelings charged
into the breach and took it on himself to make Max a real pro-
fessor in his own little State, thus killing two birds witli one
stone: raising his own prestige as a patron of the arts and
sticking a pin into the rump of the ‘‘^Sow Prussians”.

That was just before the first world war. Max Reinhardt’s
fame was already spreading over Europe and the theatrical
world of Berlin was at his feet. The minor ciiaracter actor of
plebeian social origin was another man of real personality who
was not spoiled by dizzy success. He did not seek the honours
that showered on him, but he accepted them willingly and with
a dignity free of all arrogance. But I know where he felt hap-
piest and most at home, and that was with a group of good
friends in some small restaurant where the Vienna cooking
could be relied on. And there he would sit and let himself be
amused. I say let himself be amused, because he was no great
talker, though when he did speak in his even and rather slow
voice, what he had to say was worth listening to. Max never
expressed an opinion, they said : he uttered a revelation.

One thing you could never discuss with him, however, and

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Janos^ Tfie Story of a Doctor

that was business ; business was Edmund’s job. Edmund was
an exceptionally good business man. He had been in the
leather trade until Max’s success in the theatrical world drew
him into it to look after the business side and on that side he
was almost as great a strength as Max was in the artistic sphere.
In appearance he was like a rather sick edition of Max with the
same keen eyes and mobile features. He was frail in build,
quiet like his brother, and always very well dressed. He seemed
to have no nerves, and if everyone else was excited Edmund
was always as cool as ice. He too spoke slowly and quietly. He
had a bad heart, but it was not the knowledge of this that kept
him calm. It was a matter of temperament. He could have
shared his brother’s life and all his honours, for the two were
extremely fond of each other, but their private lives were
utterly different. Edmund lived almost like a hermit and I
don’t think I ever saw him in the company of more than two
or three people outside his business affairs. He had no ambi-
tions for himself, and his life was led chiefly in his office, which,
incidentally, he had decorated with very good taste, making
very good use of his old favourite — leather. He was a modest
and unassuming man and a good friend. I remember on one
occasion we shared a wagon-lit compartment. The train was
due in at seven in the morning. Edmund got up at six and
made himself ready. Then he pulled up the covering of his
own bunk, laid out my clothes carefully for me to find ready —
and began to clean my shoes. A little matter, but very typical
of his friendliness and helpfulness.

Edmund had no easy job. The finances were complicated
and money was short. The cabaret ‘‘Schall und Rauch” had
been started with practically nothing and certainly no reserve
funds. Its success made development essential, and it became
the Kleines Theater. After that came the Neues Theater on
the Schiffbauerdam ; then the Deutsches Theater, which was
later supplemented by the ^‘Kammerspiele”, a transformed
dance-hall for servant girls known as the ‘‘Bemberg”, The first
financial angel was Beate Loewenfeld, “Auntie” as she was
called. She was the widow of a wealthy director of the Deutsche
Bank, childless and wrapped up in the theatre. Another most
favourable circumstance was that she suffered from chronic

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insomnia. Auntie Beate was a type w^hich I am afraid is fast
dying out, if it has not already died out. She was goodness and
sympathetic understanding personified ; tremendously helpful,
and almost naively grateful for every' indication of thanks and
friendship. She w^as no comic figure by any means; she not
only loved the theatre but she knew a lot about it. She w^as one
of the first to recognize Reinhardt's great talent and she stuck
to him through thick and thin. It was thanks largely to her
generous support that the modern Deutsches Theater was
founded. Her criticism of the play and the actors was extra-
ordinarily penetrating, though to look at her settled comfort-
ably in her seat with her pince-nez on her nose you would have
thought her making up for the insomnia she suffered elsew^here.
Max himself and all his circle had a deep and sincere regard
for Auntie Beate. When her final illness brought her to bed I
had to tell Max that there was no hope of recovery. Like many
geniuses he seemed to live in a world of his own where the
ordinary hateful things of life were unable to touch him, and
I think when he finally realized that dear old Auntie Beate
w^ould never again drink merrily with us after the theatre it
W'as the first time that tragedy really touched him and he
realized that life is not endless,

Edmund had to fight not only against usurious interest rates
and such-like disagreeable economic phenomena, including
rapidly increasing star salaries — ^he would not have found that
too difficult — but he also had to clip his brother's spreading
wings from time to time and to do it without hurting. That was
not so easy. Max had no sense at all for economics, not even
for the plain economics of the theatre which was his life. Every-
thing had to be on the grand scale. He was the artist, not the
reckoner, and he often produced on such a lavish scale that not
even a hundred houses sold out in succession could make the
venture show^ a profit. He relied on Edmund to perform finan-
cial miracles. The Deutsches Theater had 1,300 seats ; that was
the limit. To open up other sources of revenue came tne
theatrical tour, and here Edmund coined money from the com-
pany’s artistic renown. The Grosses Schauspielhaus in the
Schumannstrasse, saved from disaster at the last minute by
Knina, w^as purchased and transformed at a cost of six million

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

marks, and after that the splendid Schloss Leopoldskron near
Salzburg with its open-air stage and its exotic zoological
gardens.

With his complete disregard of material matters Max Rein-
hardt was a sovereign master of the art of living. I think this is
the key to his character — and to his success. I don’t believe
that Reinhardt himself realized that his primary motive was to
live life to the full in the sphere in which his rich talents could
develop to the best advantage, and that for his own pleasure he
succeeded in creating things of lasting value to the world
around him. Perhaps he was convinced utterly that the things
which pleased him must also please others. In any case, I am
quite certain that in his work he consulted no other source than
his own artistic demands and feelings.

He was on the whole rather an indolent nature and he could
laze with complete enjoyment. But when he went to work he
was possessed by the very devil of industry. I hope that the
originals of his producer scripts have been preseiwed. They
were no more than flimsy ‘‘Reklamhefte”, with his marginal
comments closely written; altogether astonishing documents.
For almost every printed passage there is some associative idea
jotted down. The ideas of the author are understood, ex-
perienced, thought out, re-created and given flesh and blood in
theatrical reality.

All this preparatory work was done at night and in the early
hours of the morning. Max Reinhardt was another one who
preferred the night to the day, and I don’t think that any of
his creative work was done in the daylight hours. Before mid-
day he was never to be seen, and most of his rehearsals were
fixed for the night hours after the evening performance. It
was only in the night that Max really lived.

A producer is more favoured than most artists in that he can
more clearly see the growth and progress of the “work he is
engaged on. The preparatory work, the preparation of the
script, is done in private, but the concrete work to give the
ideas a material form is done almost publicly in the presence of
many people, the personnel and very often visitors. This form
of creative art is therefore an open gold mine for the keen
obser\^er — ^I almost said for the scieniific observer. In any case,
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I have often thought that this is the specially fascinating attrac-
tion which lies behind my devotion to the theatre for so many
years, and will keep me a theatre enthusiast to the end of my
days.

CHAPTER IV

MORE REINHARDT

It IS ODD that Reinhardt owed his first really brilliant success
not to Ills own great capacities as a producer, but to sheer
chance: the death of a colleague. This was Valentin, a man
of real talent who had prepared Gorki’s “Doss House” for
presentation down to the last detail. He had felt ill during the
rehearsals, but the hurry and flurry of the task had kept him
going. When everything was practically ready he collapsed.
Neglected appendicitis had developed into peritonitis. The
symptoms had been clear enough and he had been warned, but
he was determined to finish the job. He did, but it cost him his
life. He died just before the premiere. Reinhardt took over and
let the piece go forward exactly as Valentin had prepared it.
The success was tremendous and the run lasted several hundred
nights.

Reinhardt himself played the Baron. I believe he appeared
on the stage only twice after that, but he continued to act all
his life, because at every rehearsal he would demonstrate part
after part to show his actors just what he wanted. This was no
dictatorial imposition of his will. He would always listen care-
fully to their views first, and what finally was agreed on was a
combination of their ideas and his. It was one of Reinhardt’s
strong points that he respected an actor’s individuality and
was, indeed, only too anxious to underline it. The actor did not
abandon his own personality, but won new strength from
Reinhardt’s direction for his own performance. It was bene-
ficial action and reaction between actor and producer. Rein-
haidt’s authority was, of course, undisputed, but he was not
in the least autlioritarian. His authority came from the fact
tiiat he was supremely competent and that as a first-rate actor
himself he knew all there was to be known about the art and

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himself commanded the physical expression of the stage emo-
tions. He not only knew exactly what he wanted, but could do
it himself. When finally his verdict was complete there was no
contradiction simply because he was right and his actors
knew it.

In private life he was a good-natured man. He loved life and
he loved living. He liked the best food, he made love to the
most beautiful women, he surrounded himself with the most
amusing companions, and in Schloss Leopoldskron he possessed
the perfect example of a small baroque palace. There is such
a thing as genius in the enjoyment of the good things of life,
and Max possessed it. I believe that he produced primarily for
his own enjoyment, and then invited the public to come and
enjoy what he had first enjoyed himself. He was far from blase
in the theatre. A stage tragedy could move him deeply. The
dramatic here could bring him to tears. And there was no
better audience for the comic actor than Max. I have never
seen anyone enjoy himself more or laugh more heartily. He was
a good friend, and in need he remained a good friend. Some-
thing of a sentimentalist, he avoided depressing things and de-
pressing society whenever he could. But easy as he was to
get on with in private life, easy and ready to give way, he was
firm and determined where his art was concerned, not only firm
and determined, but even ruthless. In the interests of the work
in hand he was prepared to sacrifice the most devoted col-
laborator if he found someone else more suited to the part, and
he would make the change with no more emotion than if he were
changing his tie. If he had determined to dismiss someone he
would spare no cost, just as he would spare no cost to obtain
someone he wanted.

He was a great and daring experimenter, and he would
consider any idea which seemed at all promising, and, of course,
he was bombarded with ideas from all sides. His talented
dramatic readers Arthur Kahane and Felix Hollaender read
piles and piles of MSS. of all kinds, and I doubt if much of any
value escaped them. Whether the piece chosen was a new one
or a revival, the presentation had to be new and in some way
original. A prominent actor had to have a part written
specially for him ; an old play had to be revived to demonstrate
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some new production idea; the classics had to be rejuvenated
with modern stagecraft. In every new presentation there had
to be something original and attractive. Of course, with so
much done and doing mistakes were inevitable here and there,
but if anyone knew how to turn disadvantage to advantage and
make a virtue of necessity it was Max Reinhardt.

Camilla Eibenschuetz was little more than a girl when she
came to the stage, inexperienced and suffering from stage
fright. Reinhardt saw that she had talent and he gave her a
prominent role at once in Raimund’s ‘‘Alpenkoenig und
Menschenfeind”. Although her voice was hardly enough for
private theatricals he put her before the footlights and made
her declaim couplets. With shaking knees, tensed muscles and
a trembling voice the poor unfortunate stood there to the
embarrassment of all of us — and earned a striking success. The
public took to her at once. They liked her nervous naivete and
her clumsiness, just as Reinhardt had liked it — ^perhaps they
thought it was deliberate. In any case, Camilla was the success
of the evening.

Reinhardt had a positive genius for getting out of an actor
just what was in him, and that applied not only to the man’s
talent. Reinhardt would make use of any feature at all that
struck him as useful. For instance, he knew that the dancer
Matray was as swift and mobile as a Barbary ape, so in his
presentation of the ^^Oedipus” of Sophocles, Matray was made
to rush through the auditorium with a burning torch shrieking
unintelligibly. The audience was fnghtened out of its wits and
the blood curdled in its veins. Halmay, he knew, was a former
Hussar officer and a brilliant horseman. Very well, Halmay
should demonstrate his astonishing horsemanship and vault into
the saddle from the most unlikely angles. And that grand old
actor Pagay had the most impressive gout I have ever come
across. He could move only half a pace at a time, but that
with enormous dignity. Reinhardt made him Philemon in the
second part of ‘Taust” ; never was the aged Philemon so con-
vincingly played.

The first triumph Reinhardt had with a production of his
own was ‘'A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (forget his Holly-
wood film version for God’s sake), with which he opened the

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Neues Theater, It was a combination of Shakespeare’s text,
Mendelssohn’s music and Ernst Stern’s decor and costumes —
the whole inspired with Reinhardt’s genius for production. It
was a brilliant success. More than that, it was epoch-making in
the art of production, and all subsequent productions of the
piece had to stand comparison with Reinhardt’s; very few
survived the ordeal. It was a time of renewal and fresh de-
partures in production. Even the opera was forced to discard
some of its hoary old traditions under the realistic influence of
the ''Salome” and “Elektra” of Richard Strauss.

There was a danger in this, of course; a tendency for the
brilliant producer to lose sight of the author. It affected the
public too; they went to see Reinhardt, not the play, as some
people go to the great conductor rather than the piece. This
is not a healthy state of affairs, but as far as Reinhardt was
concerned and making all allowances for his licentia regisseurica^
I think I can say that he remained true to the spirit of his play-
wrights. That was certainly true of his "Midsummer Night’s
Dream”, with Gertrud Eysoldt as Puck, Elsa Heims as Hermia,
and Arnold and Wassmann as Bottom and Snug. Its success
was so great tliat on the strength of it Reinhardt took over from
the retiring director of the Deutsches Theater, Papa L’ Arronge.
After that Reinhardt never had less than two theatres in which
to present his ideas, and there were times when he had as
many as six running at once, and travelling companies on the
road in addition. He certainly popularized the theatrical art,
but he never vulgarized it.

Max Reinhardt’s fame spread over the world, and as the
theatre offers a great opportunity for a rapprochement and re-
conciliation between the peoples — a much better one, in fact,
than many of the more obvious ways — I decided to approach
the Peace Prize Committee of the Nobel Foundation on Rein-
hardt’s behalf. The great philanthropist Nobel instituted five
prizes of very considerable value to be distributed annually.
There are prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and
peace. Why Nobel decided that literature alone of all the arts
was worthy of a prize I have never been able to understand.
The testamentary terms of reference for the bestowal of the
Peace Prize (which is finally decided by the Norwegian Storting
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at the instance of the Prize Committee) provide that it shall be
given to the one who has done most during the year to further
an understanding and rapprochement between the peoples* That
seemed to me quite wide enough to include an artist, whose
work may indeed do far more to satisfy the conditions than
that of many a politician. I put my suggestion to a number of
prominent people and found that they agreed with me, and
then I approached the Peace Prize Committee. I had the sup-
port of Bjoernson, but was opposed by Knut Hamsun, himself
a Nobel Prize winner for literature. Hamsun could think of no
objection on principle, but the idea that the Peace Prize should
go to a Jew was more than he could stomach. His subsequent
development into a Quisling and a supporter of the worst
enemies of peace the world has ever known, the Nazi gang, was
therefore not altogether illogical. My suggestion was not
adopted. I still think that was a great pity, not only on Rein-
hardt^s behalf, but because it would have established a valuable
precedent, freed the Committee from the burden of a narrow
Peace Prize which has become rather ridiculous, and established
a prize for artists side by side with the already existing prize for
authors, and certainly served the real cause of peace and inter-
national understanding better than the ineffective writings and
speeches of many a successful candidate for the prize.

One of Reinhardt’s most valuable collaborators was Gordon
Craig, the son of Ellen Terry, and one of the most brilliant
pioneers of modem stage decor. I don’t know offhand any
piece which was produced entirely with his decor, but his
fragmentary work opened up new paths in the art of stage
decoration. Until then Germany had not seen a new pioneer
on this field, though there were quite a number of highly
talented artists who had helped to execute Reinhardt’s ideas.
Orlik did Schiller’s '"Die Raeuber” and Shakespeare’s “Winter’s
Tale”, and the Greek Aravantinos and the Czech Strnad also
worked with Reinhardt, but Ernst Stem was his right-hand
man and held the field for a long time. A Roumanian by birth,
Stem came to Berlin as a very young man, but it was not long
before he held the undisputed leadership in his art.

All these men together with Gustav Knina formed a brilliant
team for Reinhardt. They were always present at rehearsah,

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

always ready to sacrifice work they had already done in the
interests of a still better idea, always ready to work out some-
thing new and different. Sometimes things had to be changed
even after the full-dress rehearsal, and then they had to work
night and day to have everything ready for the premiere, I
never knew a piece that was quite ready the day before the
First Night, and apart from Reinhardt, Knina and Stern, no
one in the Deutsches Theater was ever quite certain that the
prerriiere would really and truly take place the next day.
Everything seemed hopelessly confused and everyone, or almost
everyone, was running around in circles and panicking. And
in all this apparent chaos I never saw Max Reinhardt lose his
temper. He would sit at his desk and watch, dictating his
observations to his secretary, and then they would be put into
effect and the scene replayed to his satisfaction. Every objec-
tion or suggestion he had to make was put objectively and
explained calmly.

No one felt insulted at Reinhardt’s rehearsals, whereas at
odier theatres I have seen actors swallowing their wrath with
difficulty at a correction or politely listening to a suggestion and
then ignoring it and doing just what they thought right. But
Reinhardt’s authority was absolute; no one even thought of
disputing it. In some theatres the producer was in much the
same position as a prince of the royal blood, a musical amateur,
who once conducted the famous Munich Philharmonic
Orchestra. When a curious concert-goer asked the leader of the
orchestra what the prince proposed to conduct his answer was :
‘T don’t know what His Royal Highness will be gracious enough
to conduct but we’re going to play Beethoven’s Fifth.’^

The twenty-four hours prior to the First Night is the time in
which most can be learnt about the theatre. Superstitions, old
wives’ tales, prayers, vows, oaths and medicine — every mortal
thing, reasonable or ridiculous, is brought into play to ensure
success. I knew a very pretty and very vain young actress who
always wore her left stocking inside out for eight days before the
premiere. And there were the diet fanatics who wouldn’t eat
certain foods just before the great day. One actor I knew used
to skulk at street corners at certain propitious hours in the hope
that dogs would mistake him for a lamp-post. And need I

The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

mention the role played by charms, amulets, talismans, magic
roots, etc.? Caruso’s particular charm was a pair of special
cuff-links. Before a First Night Gerhart Hauptmann, a
devoted suitor of a lady described by Voltaire as the stupid
daughter of a wise mother. Astrology, was wont to consult the
stars. I had a special prescription against footlight fever. I
don’t know whether they come under this same cabalistic
heading, but it consisted of asafoetida pills. Apart from any
suggestive effect, they were certainly a sedative.

Melchior Lengyel, the Hungarian author, had written his
famous thriller “Typhoon”, which was produced by Meinhardt
and Bernauer with Cleving. The critics were hostile and the
author, directors and actors were in despair at what promised
to be a flop. I liked the play and I advised the directors not to
take it off as they were thinking of doing, but to leave it until
after the Whitsun holidays at least. They decided to do so,
and the superstitious Lengyel declared that for every night the
play ran he would take a silver thaler from the box office and
carry it around in his pocket. The play caught on despite the
critics. In the beginning Lengyel thought it very funny to go
around chinking his silver thaler in his trousers pocket, but the
play proved a great success, and after lOO performances the
weight of the silver thaler became embarrassing. Specially
reinforced braces were made and the trousers pocket had to be
lined with leather to take the burden. Lengyel was no longer
able to take a walk. He would toil from his carriage to the
theatre and back again, and that was all the exercise he got
until the run ended with the 401st performance and he was able
to abandon his silver load.

That may sound like an extreme case, but most actors and
those connected with the theatre are superstitious, and it is
perhaps more understandable in the theatre than elsewhere
because the reaction of the public is incalculable. On the First
Night everyone connected with the piece whose place is not on
the stage gathers anxiously in the wings to test the quality of
the applause ; if it comes promptly and in satisfactory volume
immediately at the end of the scene things are going well ; if
it comes even before the curtain is rung down then things are
going very well; and if there is a few seconds pause (terrible

Jams, The Story of a Doctor

ordeal) between the ringing down of the curtain and the out-
burst of applause that is best of all because the audience has
obviously been so intent on the piece that a few seconds is
required for it to find its way back to reality. I never knew a
director, no matter how experienced he might be, who kn^w
in advance what was going to happen. And what publisher
recognizes a best seller until the accountant tells him so?

It is a difficult and thankless task to try to analyse the
psychological reactions of an audience to a play, and par-
ticularly to humour. The comedy has the reputation of being
even more chancy than the serious drama. And despite all
that has been written about laughter and its causes by Democri-
tus, Weber, Le Bon, Bergson and others, laughter remains very
much of a mystery. Granted that it is caused largely by un-
expected incongruity, but what is incongruous to the one is
often not so to the other. What will make even a pessimist
laugh may make an optimist weep. In all my experience I have
never seen a professional humorist, clown or what not, laugh
really heartily. Perhaps it is because their special psyche is
always accustomed to the incongruous and it is not easy to
surprise them. Most comedians suffer from depression; they
are choleric and easily irritated. They are often credulous and
naive souls. Most strikingly, too, they have no inclination to
Bohemianism ; they are almost all in favour of domestic felicity,
a regular household and normal family life. If anyone quotes
me Chaplin in disproof, I can only say, but look at the number
of times he’s tried. Another thing I have noticed about most of
them is that they have little respect for their noble profession.
Knack, an unforgettable comic, had no less than eleven
children, but he wouldn’t let any of them come to see him
perform. Victor Arnold, after his great success as Moliere’s
Georges Dandin, came to me to know whether I would help
him get a nice safe agency with some insurance company. Max
Pallenberg, the greatest of them all, an improviser of astounding
genius whose career was cut short in its prime in a plane crash,
asked nothing rnore of life than an occasional poker game with
good friends and domestic bliss with his wife, Fritzi Massary.
And the great clown Grock was another one, and Guido
Thielscher, Alexander and Wassmann — a depressing lot of

The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

stay-at-home birds. But the comedians are the exception, their
colleagues of the boards are usually happy-go-lucky, good-
natured and, on the whole and apart from their absurd super-
stitions, care-free. And they almost invariably have that much
in common with the wise old owl : they begin to live their lives
to the full only when the lights go up.

Max Reinhardt’s genius fructified chiefly in the German
theatre, of course, but he himself and most of his prominent
colleagues were not Germans, and certainly not Prussians.
There were Italians, Roumanians, Poles, Czechs, one English-
man, Gordon Craig, and many other nationalities in Rein-
hardt’s brilliant team. His own domicile was in Berlin for
years, and would probably have remained there but for the
Nazis, who put an end to all art, but he had no sympathy with
Prussianism, and that is hardly surprising. He has been called
an internationalist, and he was certainly at home internationally,
to which my friend Cochran can vouch, who is still full of
admiration for the wealth of ideas Reinhardt show’‘ed and the
way in which he adapted himself to English taste when within
a few short weeks he prepared the great production of the
“Miracle” at Olympia. However, Max Reinhardt was not an
internationalist ; he was an Austrian, and to the wise that is the
key to his character.

There were sixteen different nationalities disunited under
tlie rule of the old Austro-Hungarian double monarchy. They
all hated each other, abused each other, despised each other —
and yet they were all held together by something intangible.
The old Habsburg court with its tremendous historic traditions,
the atmosphere of happy-go-lucky and good-humoured resigna-
tion to which life under the double monarchy had given rise,
the institution of the cafe house with its strings of newspapers
and its never-ending discussions, the justly famous pastry
dishes, the goulasch, the Wuerstel— in short, they had something
very real in common after all. There were citizens ridiculously
proud of being from Budapest, from Cracow, from Prague, from
Zagreb — ^yes, even from Przemsyl and Komotau, But once
outside the Empire and they were all from Vienna, and proud
of it. And when it came to the point they were all enthusiastic
Austrians. The Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up after

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

the defeat of the Central Powers in the First World War and
atomized by short-sighted politicians who did not even know
its simple geography and hadn’t even the faintest idea of its
spirit and traditions.

People are largely the products of their environment, and
the boundaries of the environment which suit them best do
not always coincide with the language divisions. The Thirty
Years War w^as fought out to establish the principle cuius
regio^ eius religio. Peace could be best established after this
Second World War by an inversion of that principle: cuius
religio^ eius regio. The erroneous formula of the Thirty Years
W^ar insists that a jointly inhabited land shall have inhabitants
of the same general outlook and disposition. The truth is that
people of the same general outlook and disposition should
joindy inhabit the same country. A Viennese has more in
common, much more in spirit, in desires, in beliefs and in
ideas, with a Budapest Hungarian than with any Hanoverian,
Bremer or Luebecker, even though they speak fundamentally
the same language as he does. Frontiers drawn by power-
hungry and ignorant politicians are fragile things, but a com-
munity of environment is something strong and lasting. En-
vironment even creates and determines religious tendencies.
It is no accident that the Catholic world can be separated from
the Protestant on the map almost with the stroke of a knife.
Such a community of environment was the old Austro-Hungarian
monarchy.

Max Reinhardt w’as Austrian to the core, and wherever he
was, Berlin, I^ondon or New York, he was never anything else.
He has even been accused of being too Austrian. One indignant
critic, for instance, declared that he was turning Shakespeare
into a citizen of the double monarchy. When Reinhardt
founded the famous Festpiele he had, of course, a wide choice
of venue at his disposal. First of all there was Germany, rich
in suitable places. There w^as Bayreuth (not that this com-
fortable and agreeable little Frankish town with its atmosphere
of beer and ham really suited the mystical Parsival or the
mythological Valkyries), and don’t let’s mention Ober-
amergau* But there was Munich. The French had Orange, and
the English Stratford and Malvern. Reindhardt had plenty of
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choice in Germany. Heidelberg, for instance, would have been
quite suitable. But he chose Salzburg — and he chose it because
he was an Austrian and was attracted by its intensely Austrian
atmosphere.

CHAPTER V

SALZBURG

One of my lasting memories in connection with the arts will
always be Salzburg. I liked the place enormously and Schloss
Leopoldskron was offered to me, but when I heard from
Edmund Reinhardt that his brother Max wanted to buy it I
withdrew, willingly, but not without regret. The little Schloss
is a jewel. It lies only a short drive from the town and from it
there is an uninterrupted view over Salzburg and the moun-
tains. It is not only idyllically situated, but it is beautifully
quiet, and on summer evenings with the Angelus sounding on
the still air the atmosphere is almost devotional. It was built by
the obviously talented and cultured nephew of a bishop at the
height of the baroque period. Everything about it is baroque,
and that quite naturally. Nothing has been made to order and
nothing is deliberately ‘^period”. It just is period. It was built
in and out of the spirit of the time and it is authentic to the
last stone.

If a style does not penetrate and determine every form of life
and living, then it is not authentic and it will not live. Great
periods of art and taste can be seen in more than the formative
arts ; they place their stamp indelibly on almost every utensil,
on almost every object of the time. So long as that is not true,
or not yet true, of a period, its final style is not yet developed ;
its cultural character is still in the formative period. The lack
of uniformity and certainty in our art and ways of life to-day
is an indication that our age is still struggling to find its definite
cultural form. In Leopoldskron everything breathed the spirit
of its period, the architecture, the ornamentation, every least
thing. No style can be made, so to speak, in the retort. Two
German architects and interior decorators, Olbrich and Peter
Behrens, made the attempt with the so-called '‘Jugend’’ style,

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

and God in his mercy withered it away. Peter Behrens had his
villa built, decorated and furnished in the ^ 'style”, but it was
not long before he had such a bellyfull of it that he went berserk
and wiped it out altogether.

The spirit of the day finds its expression in the taste of the
period, or, better, the style of the period is the practical expres-
sion of its culture. This can be seen strikingly in the ordinary
craftsmanship of the various peoples. The product of a Bolog-
nese or Paduan cabinet-maker is still as beautiful as that of his
cinquecento predecessors. A piece made in Paris to-day in the
style of Louis XV can be detected as a copy only by anti-
quarian experts and then not from the quality of the workman-
ship. In Salzburg too the local masons and decorators had
cherished the traditions of their forbears, and thanks to them
it proved possible not only to restore Leopoldskron, but even to
rebuild it in part — the library chiefly — a work carried out under
Max Reinhardt’s direction with great piety and respect for the
spirit of the original builders. It was in this rebuilt library that
Reinhardt kept his magnificent collection of books and manu-
scripts relating to the theatre, including many unique items.
Unfortunately both Schloss and collection fell into the hands of
the Nazi vandals. It was in this library that Max Reinhardt
spent many of his happiest hours with his friends around him.
I remember on one occasion for the pleasure of his guests and
his friends he got the inspired comedian Max Pallenberg to
play Moliere’s "Malade imaginaire” in this library- before the
open fireplace.

In the grounds was a zoological garden, including an aviary
of rare and exotic birds, and an antique open-air theatre.
Everything that belonged to a princely house of the period was
there in simple elegance and nobility. The secret of the agree-
able atmosphere of Leopoldskron was its natural harmony;
nothing was pompous, and there was no straining after effect ;
the pure spirit of art inspired those old builders and it informed
the whole of their work.

There was another and very important reason for Max
Reinhardt’s happiness in Leopoldskron. After the failure of
his marriage with Else Heims, he turned to Helene Tliimig, a
member of an old and well-known Austrian theatrical familv.
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music aud England

She proved a highly congenial companion and his life with her
was harmonious and happy. Helene Thimig was an artist and
a personality in her own right, and she was by no means
altogether outshadowed by her brilliant mate. I always felt
there was something baroque in her own make-up. She re-
minded me of a figure from the cathedral altar of Ulm come to
life. On the stage or off, she was equally serene and natural.
It can have been no easy task to look after, arrange and regulate
the domestic life of a man whose existence was so full and whose
nature was so fastidious and discriminating as Max Reinhardt’s,
but she performed it tactfully" and unobtrusively.

In the beginning the dramatic arts held the field in Salzburg,
but later on music more than caught up and the general
musical level was raised to unforgettable heights by both Bruno
Walter and Toscanini. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
with its great leader Arnold Rose played regularly there and
the finest singers in the world vied for the honour of taking
part in the Festspiele. The dramatic production was, of course,
in the hands of Max Reinhardt, whilst the Vienna producer
Wallerstein arranged the operas. With the assistance of Bruno
Walter, a conductor of genius and a great stage artist, operas
were superbly produced and sung. Bruno Walter had gone
through both the musical and dramatic schools with Gustav
Mahler. Salzburg owes its world fame primarily to Max
Reinhardt and Bruno Walter, and they were worthy of each
other. Toscanini came to Salzburg later, where his performances
of 'Talstaff” and ‘Tidelio” became memorable in the history
of music.

For musicians Salzburg was already a hallowed spot, thanks
to its associations with Mozart. His spirit seemed to have lived
on in the town. But I think that not even all this would have
sufficed to make Salzburg what it became had it not been for
the ^delightful baroque atmosphere of the town itself with its
towers and gables, its cathedral and its closed-in square, its
air of historic culture, its happy peaceable citizens, their
quaint and delightful costumes and their mediaeval traditions.
Salzburg w^as an inspired choice for the Festspiele, and once
chosen by Reinhardt’s artistic eye all that was needed was
his fertile brain, his vigorous energy^ and his tremendous

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

enthusiasm to bring all these things together into the services
of art.

Even without the Festspiele Salzburg would still be a de-
lightful place to visit. It is a real old Austrian provincial town.
It is ruled by a hierarchy of pensioned-ofF military gentlemen
and officials spending their declining years and their modest
pensions. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone meets in
the cojffee-house, that authentic symbol of the real democracy
which prevailed in the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Your
Austrian is a denizen of the coffee-house. The informal atmo-
sphere of the place appeals to him; he can exist in it just as he
is, just as God made him without pretence and without pose.
In the coffee-house he can meet his fellows without social
obligation and behave himself in his own individual manner.
If he doesn’t want to talk he stays silent over his drink or reads
the newspapers, of which the true Austrian coffee-house has
always a great choice. And if he wants to express his opinions
he will always find an audience prepared to listen to him.
Rendezvous are kept in coffee-houses, business is done, friend-
ships are made and sealed. The guest can take part in discus-
sions or remain a silent listener as he pleases. He can seek the
local bubble reputation, he can educate himself, he can gather
information, or if he so wishes he can just rest his weary limbs.
If the spirit of the old Austrain coffee-house is congenial to him
he will always be a welcome guest. Proprietor and waiters will
smile and greet him hopefully when he comes in. Not only can
he take his coffee, and very good coffee it is usually, but he can
eat if he will, and he can play games and, often, listen to music.

The murmurous voices of the other guests form an agreeable
background to his own conversation or to his silence. The air
filled with tobacco smoke is a pleasant change from the fresh,
sometimes all too fresh, air outside. An hour or two spent in
that pleasant atmosphere in the evening will give him a happy
tiredness and leave him ready for his bed. And he makes for
home with the pleasant knowledge that he will be there again
in the morning for his coffee, his two soft-boiled eggs serv^ed in
a glass, and his slice of Prague ham with brown bread and dairy
butter before going out again into the busy and exhausting day.
After his lunch there is again the coffee-house for his black
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coffee or his Kapuziner and perhaps a short siesta. Two or
three hours later comes the time for his Jause and there he is
again. If he is a good father and husband he eats his dinner
with his family and returns to recuperate amongst his friends in
the evening. That, of course, is the regimen of your civilized
Austrian with only a limited need for the pleasures of the coffee-
house. There are others, coffee-house fanatics, who spend the
whole day there, live there, do their business there, attend to
their correspondence there and go home only to sleep, leaving it
unwillingly only when they must, and with the firm intention of
returning to its happy fug at first opportunity.

Salzburg has this institution in perfection, and it also has all
the other institutions of Austrian Gemuetlichkeit : the com-
fortable Wirtshaus, the quaint cellar local, the Bierhaus and
little restaurants with local specialities such as Salzburger
Nockerl, and a variety of drinks to satisfy the most fastidious.
Here in Salzburg the good old Austrian way of life is followed
to the happy letter : the mountains are admired from below,
the churches from outside, and the coffee-houses, etc., from
within.

CHAPTER VI

ELIZABETH BERGNER

Oneofthe greatest stage personalities I know and my very
good friend is EKzabeth Bergner. She is the prototype of
femininity. Her delicate, boyish Tanagra figure conceals a gz*eat
soul, and her serene features are the expression of an unusual
intellect. Her large expressive blue eyes are those of one wko
thinks deeply. There are few questions one can discuss with
Liesl without hearing an original and striking viewpoint. In
matters of art her criticism is invariably both sound and
brilliant. She is, of course, a great admirer of Shakespeare, but
even w^here the greatest master of all dramatic art is concerned
she is still critical. On one occasion we went to see ''King Lear'’.
She found it impossible to sit through the whole play and we
left after the second act. Hardly a day passes without her
receiving some manuscript or other from an author. She reads
everything and answ’ers objectively.

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

Few actresses have won the London public as rapidly as
she did, but there was no vanity in her triumph. On the
contrary, success makes her more critical and still more
fastidious in her demands on herself She acted in London both
on the stage and in film parts almost incessantly until her health
broke down under the strain. On her recovery she worked
extremely hard polishing and building her part in Barrie’s
‘‘The Boy David”, which was written specially for her and
whose title role she played, once again with great success.
Barrie died, the war broke out, suitable parts were infrequent,
and, in addition, Chamberlain’s policy created a disagreeable
atmosphere in which she found it difficult to breathe freely, so
she retired to her beautiful country house, “Huntingdale” in
Egham, where with philosophic resignation she grew maize and
kept pigs and chickens.

I spent many happy hours in this house, wdiere she lived alone
with her husband, and once a w^eek I used to go down and
spend the evening with them. We w^ould almost invariably
stay up talking into the early hours of the morning, there was so
much w''e had in common. On many such evenings there were
heavy raids on London, and from her house, w^hich was situated
on a hill, w’'e could see over to London where the sky was full of
exploding shells and the flashes of bombs as they w'ent dowm.
She had gro\vn to love London, and such a sight was alw^ays
extremely painful to her.

In Germany she w^as one of the first to recognize the w^ay
things were going, and long before the majority of people she
drew her own conclusions and acted on them. She left the
country and came to England before Hitler came to power. She
hated Nazi Germany and regarded the brutal degeneration of
the country and its people with horror and contempt. Although
in the early days of the war in England theatre-going fell away
very considerably she wras overwhelmed wdth offers of parts, but
she consistently refused to act in a play whose literary quality
was not up to the high level she had set for herself. Rather
than play in a poor piece she would not act at all, and she
therefore went into voluntary retirement, though she desired
nothing more than to have the public at her feet again, for
to her acting is the breath of life.

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I advised her to go to America, and in order to give her
courage to start afresh and carve out a new life for herself in a
strange country I pointed out that the fame she had already
won would make it easy for her to find her feet. She brusquely
rejected what she regarded as a proposal that she should live on
her laurels in America : ‘^Whoever wants to rely on past fame is
not a real artist. Success must be won again each time afresh as
though one were setting foot on the stage for the first time."’ I
think that attitude is typical of her greatness and of her pro-
found feeling of responsibility towards her art. It was in this
spirit that she finally went to America, and it was in this spirit
too that she won success there also.

In all my descriptions of the various artists I have known —
whatever branch of art they followed — I have refrained from
attempting to pass judgment on their artistic abilities or their
place in the artistic hierarchy. I have described them as human
beings with their physical, intellectual and other characteristic
attributes and foibles, in the hope that the real critics might find
material to help them in their judgments. I propose to make no
exception with regard to Elizabeth Bergner, particularly as
many good books have already been written on the subject.
But if there is a master key to unlock the secret of her artistic
significance I believe it lies in the invariable loyalty she
maintains to the high standards she has herself imposed ; to the
fact that all her life, whether on the stage or off, she neither
says nor does anything in opposition or contradiction to her own
deep artistic feelings. In short, and at the risk of sounding trite,
she truly lives her roles. And therefore she can act only real
art; indifferent and inferior material is impossible for her.

CHAPTER VII

GERHART HAUPTMANN

On Novemberi5th,I93I, the birthday of the great German
dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, a party of his friends and
acquaintances was gathered with him to celebrate the event,
including Field-Marshal von Seeckt, the famous Norw^an

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explorer and traveller Sven Hedin^ Theodor WolfF, the editor of
the Berliner Tageblatt^ the Austrian publicist Stefan Grossmann,
Max Reinhardt and myself. In the course of the conversation
the Nazis and their leader, Adolf Hitler, cropped up, and I
asked Hauptmann whether he knew anything about the fellow.
He did not, it appeared, and he turned to the company in
general for information. No one seemed to know much about
him or the aims of his movement, but von Seeckt, as always,
had a joke ready. A peasant had a donkey which fell sick. He
called in the vet, but the vet could do nothing, and the donkey
still lay motionless on the floor of its stable. Other vets had no
greater success, until finally, in desperation, the peasant called
in a quack, who bent down and whispered something into the
donkey’s ear, whereupon the brute sprang to its feet at once.
When the admiring peasant asked the quack how he had
obtained such speedy results, the quack replied: ^'Simple. I
just v/hispered ‘Heil Hitler’. Every donkey jumps up then.”

That was our first acquaintance with a phenomenon which
was so soon to become world history — shameful world history,
for which the famous German dramatist bears some responsi-
bility. Hauptmann was the son of a Silesian innkeeper, whose
father had been one of the wretched Silesian weavers. In his
childhood Hauptmann received only the most elementary
education, and his youth was made more difficult by the fact
that he suffered from tuberculosis. At first his artistic tendencies
expressed themselves in modelling. I have seen some of his
work. He was obviously on the wrong track ; none of it was in
any way distinguished. Then, like his brother Carl, he turned
to the pen. His first play, ‘‘Before Sunrise”, was accepted by
Otto Brahm and performed at his “Freie Buehne” before a
membership audience. A public performance would have been
impossible owing to the censorship, for Hauptmann’s play had
as its theme the degeneracy of rich peasants, and it handled the
subject with brutal frankness. It made him famous over-night.
There were stormy scenes in the auditorium between supporters
.and opponents of the play, in which a birth takes place. One
member of the audience — a doctor who had read the book —
indignantly brandished a pair of obstetric forceps. With some
•difficulty fisticuffs were prevented. The next day Germany
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knew that a new dramatic star had risen. In his first play
Hauptmann showed both courage and devotion to truth ; un-
fortunately he was to show himself wanting in both in later life.

Hauptmann’s powers of observation were extraordinarily
keen, and from the beginning he was strongly under the
influence of the nascent social revolution. He was at home in
Silesia, where he knew the conditions and he knew the people,
and no one has ever better described this particular German
type : poverty-stricken, humorous, trusting, cunning and stolid
in turns. In this period of his life, to which his famous play
“The Weavers” belongs, with the abortive revolt of the Silesian
weavers in the nineteenth century as its theme, Hauptmann
was an honest and progressive spirit, and his work was
authentic and convincing. His more lyrical poetical dramas
are also likely to live on in German literature, including the
beautiful requiem “Hanneles Himmelfahrt”, and later his great
historical play around “Florian Geyer”, the knightly champion
of justice and mercy, and his “Michael Kramer”, a middle-class
drama of profound inner honesty and high devotion to duty.
Nothing can affect their lasting literary value.

Hauptmann is definitely a split personality, as can be seen
clearly in the later stage of his creative activity. Left to himself,
with pen in hand, and perhaps under the inspiring and
liberating effects of a glass or two, he has written memorable
work. But later on, with a secretary and her typewriter waiting
at the appointed hour, the source of his inspiration dried up.
The unconscious and God-given quality was exhausted.
Hauptmann did his best to compensate for its absence by
turning introspective, admiring himself, indulging in pseudo-
philosophy, striking imposing attitudes, and generally deceiving
himself.

He was a fine-looking man with a noble head — a sort of
Goethe redivivus. He was of middle height only, but of an
imposing carriage. I knew him forty years ago, and even then
he had the fair locks brushed upwards away from the dome-like
forehead which merged imperceptibly into the bald skull, where
the hair receded, creating the perfect poetic brow. His eyes
were expressionless, but they were saved by the high, bushy
brows above them, which created the impression of a poet lost

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in deep thought. His nose was big and formless, his lips full and
rather lascivious, his symmetrical face clean shaven, and
although he had not the characteristic doe-like eyes and finely
chiselled nose and lips of Goethe, one was never allowed to
forget that he liked to pose as a contemporary Goethe in
appearance as well.

He was a great poseur, and he became natural only in the
early morning hours after a bottle or two in amusing company.
He was always celebrating something, and if there was nothing
to celebrate he would invent it. His house, not very tastefully
furnished, was in Agnetendorf in the Riesengebirge, but he
spent only a few weeks in the year there. I often visited him in
Agnetendorf. On one occasion his honest old servant, a man
who had been with him for years, said to me regretfully: ^‘It’s
such a pity the good old days have gone when he was so jovial
and happy. Now he’s a doctor and so famous, he’s always so
buttoned up.” It was unfortunately only too true. Hauptmann
was alw^ays so buttoned up, always so conscious of the impression
he wanted to create, always posing. But his works were greater
even than his vanity.

He surrounded himself with admirers. He couldn’t stand
being alone. The royalties from the sale of liis books and the
performance of his plays were very considerable, and tempted
him to luxurious living. He collected lions, and he loved to have
every famous man who came to Berlin at his Stammtisch in the
Hotel Adlon. In the summer months he would retire to the
island of Hiddensee in the Baltic, and the three winter months
he spent in Rapallo. It was whilst he was in Rapallo that he
sought relations with Mussolini, who invited him to Rome, and
received him with great respect. Von Neurath was the German
Ambassador in Rome at the time, and he took no official notice
whatever of Hauptmann’s presence. A question on the subject
in the Reichstag cost von Neurath his job. The permanent
official, Carl von Schubert, caused Stresemann to express dis-
approval, and von Neurath was recalled. Later on von Neurath
liimself became a Minister, and he revenged himself on Schubert,
who was superannuated before his time. It was perhaps a
blessing in disguise, for it saved Schubert, who was a European,
from any responsibility whatever for Hitler and his regime.

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It was not easy to carry on a conversation with Hauptmann.
After long thought he would begin a sentence, and then very
seldom end it. He would lose the thread of liis remarks half-way
through, and then end up with ‘'etcetera, etcetera, etcetera”.
However, that was only in philosophical or scientific questions,
in which, owing to his completely undisciplined knowledge, he
was the veriest tyro. In questions relating to art, where
judgments are more intuitive, he was quite different, and the
artist spoke in him, but that was comparatively rare. Emil
Ludwig could imitate him brilliantly, and often amused his
friends at Hauptmann^s expense.

In his later years Hauptmann’s style became more and more
pompous, but in his best period his grasp of the dramatic
exigencies was thoroughly reliable, and his work for the
theatre sound and vital. The construction of a play like his
"Fuhrmann Henschel” is as firm and rigid as though built on a
basis of cement, but with other pieces singular defects revealed
themselves in the rehearsals, and had to be corrected. Haupt-
mann was open to advice and suggestions. Max Reinhardt did
not like the ending of “Before Sundown”, which, incidentally,
was shown at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London in 1933
Werner Krauss. He thought that the decline of the hero
provided no suitable culmination. We sat together tw^o
evenings in the Adlon over that, and finally it was decided that
the old man should die suddenly of, at my suggestion, angina
pectoris. Thus I have also been consiliarius at a stage drama.

What are we to think of those Germans who remained in
Germany after Hitler came to power although they could easily
have shaken the dust of the land of slavery, thievery, knavery
and brutality from their feet if they had chosen? Gerhart
Hauptmann was one of them. It is true that he was seventy
when the catastrophe befell Germany, and that would have
served as full excuse for an ailing greybeard bound to bath-
chair or bed, but Hauptmann was as active as a man twenty or
thirty years younger. He bathed every day in the sea whilst he
was at Hiddensee, and in winter in Rapallo he would stride
around vigorously, lightly clad in a sort of toga Candida he
favoured. Constitutional inertia might make it impossible for a
man of his age to start a new life somewhere else, but there was

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no inertia about Hauptmann. The only reason he stayed in
Germany was because he was unwilling to go.

If any man had cause to be thankful for the ‘‘system period’’,
the “fourteen years of shame and dishonour” — as the Nazis
were accustomed to refer to the era of the Weimar Republic —
it was Hauptmann. He was its representative literary figure, he
was honoured on every possible occasion, his plays were
constantly played at the leading theatres throughout the
Republic, and his books were bought and read in enormous
editions. But when the Weimar Republic came to an end he
stayed on, and saw his loyal Jewish publisher deliberately
pushed to* the verge of ruin, saw some of his friends brutally
murdered and others forced to flee leaving their possessions
behind them, saw his people brutalized and robbed of their
freedom, saw innocent men and women dragged off to concen-
tration camps to torture and death, and by his silence he
connived at it all. He knew what was happening. There was no
one in Germany who did not know what was happening. But
Hauptmann was unwilling to know. And even if he had not
sufficient civil courage to raise his voice in protest, at least he
could have left the country and gone to his beloved Rapallo,
where his close friend Fritz von Unruh and the family of his
publisher were living in exile.

Yes, he would have lost his German royalties, I know, but his
translation royalties would have been quite sufficient to grant
him an economically care-free life in exile. However, his
personal comfort and his desire for luxury kept him in Nazi
Germany. Even granting that he may, like Hindenburg and
his wretched adviser Meissner, have regarded the whole Hitler
affair as an episode, an experiment which would soon break
down, he could still have left the country easily enough when
it became clear that he was wrong.

But Hauptmann went out of his way to identify himself vdth
the Nazi regime, and he delivered a series of deplorable
broadcasts. He must, at least, have felt very much ashamed of
himself, for he sent his son Benvenuto to me in London as the
bearer of his excuses and the latest edition of his collected
works, I told Benvenuto what we had all expected of his father
and what we now thought of his attitude, Benvenuto denied
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that his father had degenerated into a Nazi lickspittle, and
declared that the broadcasts had been faked by Goebbels and
delivered in his father’s name. Incidentally, when Furtwaengler
was in London he assured me that the same thing had happened
to him. I cannot judge the truth of this, but both Hauptmann
and Furtwaengler had every opportunity of breaking with foul
people of that type, and neither of them took it. Through
Benvenuto, Hauptmann sent me the excuse we shall probably
hear from all of them now : he had stayed on out of a feeling of
duty towards his country, on the watch, so to speak, lest worse
befall.

He prevented nothing, and made no attempt to prevent any-
thing. In the notes I made before writing this depressing
chapter the heading reads "‘Treat Hauptmann with consider-
ation”. If I could have found any excuse which would have
held water for a fine artist and an intimate friend, I would
have been only too willing to do so. But I could not. Gerhart
Hauptmtann, the author of “Die Weber”, “Florian Geyer” and
“Fuhrmann Henschel”, the greatest dramatic champion of
social freedom in Germany, has revealed himself as a narrow
soul without human dignity, and his character unworthy of his
own high art. And his greatest offence is not the acts he
committed, but the acts he omitted. In his moving drama
“Hanneles Himmelfahrt”, a half-realistic and half-visionary
piece, a feverish child asks : “Are there then sins that can never
be forgiven?”

Yes, Gerhart Hauptmann, there are.

CHAPTER VIII

DAVID OLIVER, LUBITSCH, MARLENE,
STERNBERG, PASCAL AND KORDA

When one realizes that there is just about as much capital
invested in films as there is in the steel industry, one begins to
have some idea of its economic importance. Obviously the film
industry caters for a world demand of enormous dimensions.
At first it operated from a purely commercial standpoint, and

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the level of its productions was deliberately kept low enough to
appeal as widely as possible; hence, too, the great part that
sensationalism played in its very early days. The invention of
the sound film and. of technicolour furthered the development
of the film to its rightful place amongst the arts, and in addition
the general public, as it becomes more and more educated in the
new art, begins to put higher and higher aesthetic and artistic
demands on film production.

For thirty “five years now I have had the good fortune to be
a close friend of David Oliver, one of the pioneers of the film
industry, and from liim I have learnt much about its early
years. Oliver was a genius in his way, and the development of
the films owes a very great deal to him. However, he never
came into the limelight, and he is hardly known except amongst
liis colleagues of the film industry. David Oliver’s own career
has something of the screen play about it : poor boy driven from
home by an unkind stepmother (believe it or not) goes out into
the world with only a shilling or two in his pocket to make his
fortune — and succeeds ! Oliver was eighteen years old when he
left his native Austria and landed in Bremen. He was a highly
intelligent lad, and he soon had a job with a firm of real estate
agents. One of his tasks^ — a most significant one, as it turned
out — ^was to arrange for the sale of the premises of a bankrupt
theatrical company. Someone in Paris nibbled, and David was
sent off to the City of Light to land the fish. He failed.

Strolling along the boulevards a little depressed by the
failure of his mission and killing time before his train left for
Germany in the evening, he saw a queue waiting to go into
what he assumed was one of the usual varietes. It struck him as a
good way of passing the time, so he joined the end of the queue.
When he got inside it turned out to be one of the earliest
exhibitions of short Pathe Animated films. He stared at the
flickering images in amazement and incredulity, and was so
interested that after the performance he went to see the
manager to learn all about it and make quite sure there was no
trick — ^silhouettes of living figures, or something of the sort.

The manager, also the proprietor, was a good-natured
Alsatian, and he willingly explained to the interested youth just
how the thing worked. And Oliver had a brilliant idea. Why
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not take over the derelict theatre which was still on his hands
and show these films? When he returned he approached the
brothers Hagen with his idea and persuaded them to put up
285OOO marks, whilst he himself scraped together 1 2,000 marks
as his own share in the venture. The first film theatre in
Germany opened on a Friday in the year 1903, and the first
day’s takings amounted to 6 marks. By the following Sunday
they had risen to 7 marks. And so it went on until new
bankruptcy threatened. The public had some sort of idea that
the danger of fire was enormous owing to the celluloid, and
they were not prepared to risk their valuable skins to see
moving pictures projected on a wall.

Da\dd dashed off to Paris again to see if his Alsatian friend
could give him any advice, and he found that the business there
was popularized by Pathe Animated cars which drove slowly
along the main streets with a film camera arranged very visibly
on a tripod, whilst an operator — ^no doubt with his cap on back
to front — ^turned the handle and filmed the crow’^ds. At the same
time other men distributed handbills informing the public that
they could come to the theatre and see their living images on the
screen. David saw the possibilities of that, returned at once to
Bremen and did the same. It worked, and the public began to
pour into the theatre, on which, in the meantime, David had
taken an option for 28,000 marks. Despite the preliminary
difficulty, he had never ceased to believe in the future of his idea.

Before long business was so flourishing that he began to look
around for larger premises. He found a large hall with a very
small stage belonging to a brewery in one of the suburbs. A
brilliant and persuasive business man, he explained the whole
project to the directors of the brewery and proposed that they
should let him show his films in the hall for three years without
rent, and that after that they should pay him a rent of 30,000
marks a year for his pains. Their reward would be the sale of
their beer to his audiences. This was a rather unusual and
topsy-turvy rental agreement, but the directors proved open to
new ideas, and they agreed. At first the public was admitted
free and received a glass of beer and a pair of sausages for
50 pfennig — approximately sixpence. But soon the audiences
grew so rapidly that David was able first of all to discontinue the

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sausages and then the beer, so that in the end the film-goers
paid fifty pfennig to come in, and then bought and consumed
enormous quantities of beer and sausages whilst watching the
performances. The public rapidly became film-minded, and at
the end of two years Oliver was able to dispose of all his interest
in the affair for the very handsome sum of 350,000 marks.

In those early days there was only one other firm apart from
Pa the Animated w’hich was producing films, and that was the
Nordisk Film Company in Copenhagen, whose director was
Ole Olsen. Oliver established close business relations with this
firm which sold one-acters at 60 pfennig a metre, and two-
and threc-acters at 50 pfennig a metre. Oliver soon became
personally acquainted with Olsen, who admired the business
ability and go of the twenty-one-year old youth and offered him
a directorship in the firm with 10 per cent of the profits. Oliver
accepted, and in one year it brought him in no less than half-a-
million marks.

By this time he had a score of theatres in various parts of
Germany, but he made no attempt to rest on his laurels. In
those early days of the film performances had been held in all
sorts of shacks and flea-pits, but this was not good enough for
Oliver, who had his own progressive ideas. His theatres were to
be palatial affairs with upholstered seats, thick carpets, marble
halls, soft music and coloured lights. The Little Man was to
escape from his humdrum world, and do it in comfort for a small
entrance fee. The problem of acoustics interested Oliver in
particular, and he spent large sums of money on it until at last
he felt he had solved it, and the new Picture Palaces w^ere built
according to Oliver’s own ideas and designs. They were so
successful that Government and municipal authorities began to
approach him for assistance in the building of concert-halls and
opera-houses. Oliver was also a lover of good music, and he
insisted on the engagement of good orchestras at his houses.
The members of these orchestras were encouraged to study at
the conservatoires during the day, and from their ranks more
than one well-known concert virtuoso developed.

From his headquarters in Berlin Oliver also proceeded to
organize the film industry on an international scale, though
perhaps this was not quite so grand a task as it sounded, for in

The Theatre^ Art, Music and England

those days the film world was confined to Scandinavia,
Germany, France, Italy and Russia — and Russia was the
biggest market of all. Neither Great Britain nor the United
States showed any interest in the new industry.

The birth of the star system in the film world took place
round about the year 1905. The first male star, and the idol of
all female film-goers, was Waldemar Psylander, and the first
female star was that great actress Asta Nielsen. They were both
Danes. Their films became enormously popular, and had to be
produced in a record number of copies — a record, incidentally,
which has never since been broken. The Nordisk Cinemas,
whose numbers steadily increased, showed an hour and a half’s
programme consisting of various shorts, nature studies,
sensational events and topical happenings. It was not until 1910
that anything like the carefully manufactured films we know
to-day were attempted, and this was then done in studios
specially planned and built for the purpose by Oliver. These
early studios served as models for the more ambitious under-
takings which came later in Denham and Hollywood.

By 19155 during the First World War, the tremendous future
aw^aiting the film industry became obvious, and that was more or
less by accident. The famous Circus Sarasani visited Copen-
hagen, the home of the Nordisk Film Company, which was
approached to make an advertisement film. Out of this idea
grew the first of the really “stupendous”, “breath-taking”,
“thrilling” films which since then have poured out of the
studios of the world down to our own day. Oliver used the
Sarasani company and its animals to make something far bigger
than originally intended. It was the first great film, “The
Favourite Wife of the Maharajah”. The male star was Gimar
Tollnaes, a rather shy and absolutely unheroic actor, but a
handsome man of splendid physique. In one scene he had to
ride on a white horse leading his men into a conquered town.
He was very nervous of animals, and it took two men to get him
into the saddle; and half-a-dozen others had to walk near the
horse to make quite certain that it did not shy or run away and
unseat the hero. After many difficulties the film was completed.
It proved a tremendous success, and it was shown not only in
Copenhagen but in every town on the Continent which boasted

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

a Cinema, Picture Palace, Electric Theatre, Bioscope, or
whatever name it went under.

The financial success, too, was enormous. At first the film
was hired out at what was then the normal rent of loo marks a
week, but it drew the public in crowds everywhere, and it
drew them for w’eeks, and even months on end, so that the
fortunate producers were able to increase rentals rapidly until
they reached the dizzy height of 2,000 marks a week, and even
at that price theatre proprietors fell over each other to obtain the
marvel. The total costs of production for this film was 30,000
marks, and the Nordisk Company netted the handsome profit of
over five million marks on it.

In the meantime, and largely on the basis of the experience of
the Nordisk Company, the film industry was developing rapidly
in the United States. To-day British and U.S. production far
outstrips continental production and holds something like a
monopoly position in the world.

In 1912 Oliver controlled the Union Theatres (U.T.), which
he operated as a subsidiary company, through which he
exercised a controlling interest on a production company
(Union), which produced a series of short comedies on the
adventures and misadventures of a shop assistant. The leading
role was played by a young comedian named Ei'iist Lubitsch,
who also began to direct them. These Lubitsch comedies
proved very popular, and the Board was highly satisfied with
Lubitsch until it heard that he entertained the absurd notion of
producing tragedies. However, Oliver himself recognized the
qualities of the young Lubitsch, and decided, against the
opposition of his fellow Board members, to risk a little money on
Lubitsch and give him a try-out. The first result was a rather
uneven but undoubtedly arresting film called *‘The Eyes of the
Mummy”. It was in this film that a young Polish dancer made
her debut in the leading role. Her name was Pola Negri. It was
with Pola Negri that Lubitsch later secured his greatest
triumph '^‘Madame Dubarry”, which achieved a wwld-wide
reputation and brought them both Hollywood contracts.

An amalgamation of renting interests, studios and laboratories
with the Oliver Nordisk Group eventually led to the formation
of the German UFA. The German Government and the
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General Staff were quick to realize the propaganda value of this
octopus and its importance for influencing public opinion, and
from then on Oliver, who held different views as to the task of
the cinema, came into conflict with his colleagues, and finally
he sold out his interests. A little later the German UFA
Company went bankrupt, with the doubtful distinction of being
the first failure in the film industry.

For a while Oliver concentrated on production, and together
with Eric Pommer he produced that classic of the silent screen
‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari”. Pommer assembled a star cast
headed by the young actor Conrad Veidt, a leading exponent of
the weird and the creepy on the screen. Oliver’s main contri-
bution was in the designing of the sets, for which he engaged the
futurist painter, Cesar Klein.

Later Oliver became more and more in demand by the banks
as a consultant on finance when film companies got into
difficulties. The years between the two world wars saw the rise
of his second cinema circuit, backed by powerful financial
groups, and Oliver began to build again: cinemas in period
styles for the middle class, modernistic little cinemas for the
intellectual and sophisticated, and splendiferous halls for the
multitude. The pinnacle of his building achievements was
achieved in Hamburg with an auditorium to seat 4,000 and a
stage suitable for a cinema, for plays or grand opera. The stage
machinery was the last word in modern cinema and theatre
technique. A powerful hydraulic system enabled a whole
orchestra to rise or disappear. A button was pressed, and the
front part of the auditorium sank from view and a great platform
arose to extend the original stage. An illuminated glass floor
gave an effect of transparency to the ballet — to mention a few
of the technical miracles.

The advent of the Nazis forced an unwilling Oliver into the
limelight he disliked. The Nazis forbade the showing of any
film starring Jewish actors or actresses. Oliver defied them by
presenting the British film “Gathexine the Great”, with the
Jewess Elizabeth Bergner in the title role at the Berlin cinema
“Capitol”. A gang of Nazi hooligans raided the cinema, and it
was impossible to finish the performance. The next day a bomb
was thrown at Oliver’s car, who then decided to leave Germany.

3^3

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

He is now in this country, as full of ideas as ever and his brain
teeming with new plans for the future.

The old black-and-white silent film was not quite so limited
as is generally supposed to-day, and it had its attractions. The
relation of the audience to the film was much that of a deaf man
who has learnt lip-reading. In some respects the emotions
found a fuller expression in the old silent film than they do with
the sound-track film, and an impressive pantomimic art
developed which w^as quite as national and racial as sound films
are to-day by the language in which they are played.

In the early days of the film’s development it looked almost as
though the industry was going to develop into an Austro-
Hungarian monopoly. Most of the pioneer film men, like
Oliver, Fox, Goldwyn, Meyer, Lubitsch and Gzukor, came from
the old double monarchy. Almost all these men are still active
in the film industry, and new prominent film producers have
come forward, also from the old double monarchy, such as the
three Korda brothers, Alexander, Vincent and Zoltan, Joseph
Sternberg and Gabriel Pascal. I know most of them, and I was
friendly with many of them, and thus I was in a ver>'- favourable
position to observe the development of the industry.

At first films were made out of doors with whatever natural
background offered itself, and it was only much later that
production went into the studios. Then came sound. Many,
many years ago in New York Edsel Ford gave me a demon-
stration of sound in connection with the film with the assistance
of special photo-cells imported from Germany. I watched the
development of studio production, the perfecting of lighting
technique, and the working out of all the tricks and technical
accessories which went to the making of films, first in the Neu-
babelsberg studios just outside Berlin, and later in Elstree,
Shepherd’s Bush and in Korda’s great studio grounds at
Denham. To-day the studios of the film industry are
reminiscent of fairyland. There is hardly any aspect of modern
technique that the film has not taken and used for its own
purposes. The finished picture on the screen gives the film-
goer no inkling of the work, the technical apparatus and the
personnel which have gone to make it. It is a long and arduous
passage from the book (if the film is based on a book) to the
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shooting script. Every scene, every change of scene, and every
bit of business must first be carefully thought over and worked
out. The decor, the sound technique, the lighting effects, the
acting — everything must be worked into a harmonious whole.
And when the film has finally been shot it is far from finished.
It is in thousands of “takes’", and the best have to be cut out
and carefully joined together to make up the perfect whole.

No one who has not witnessed the actual shooting of a film
can have any idea of what is involved, or know why perhaps a
scene which takes up only a minute or two when tlie film is
finally showm actually took days of hard and complicated work
on the part of the whole company to make. It is nerve-and-
sinew-destroying work, which makes even the high salaries paid
to those who engage in it seem not too high. The whole artistic
and technical personnel is on the set the whole day, working or
waiting to w^ork. One scene may be shot thirty or forty times
before the producer is satisfied that he has got the very best
possible out of it. It is terribly hard w^ork, not only for the
individual artist, but for everyone engaged.

The two-dimensional photographic art has its own special
laws, and only experience can teach just where the stress must
come in a living picture to get the best possible out of the
camera. In the last resort that is the producer’s job. It is no
easy one, and therefore good producers are rare. He is the
supreme captain of the undertaking, and it is he who must
maintain the discipline of the whole and subordinate the entire
apparatus to his artistic will. The essential position of the
producer is a temptation to despotism, and some of them are
inclined to over-rate their qualities. I remember a famous
producer telling me rather boastfully that he could make anyone
into a star if he w^anted to. There is something in that, of course,
for the film public is highly suggestible. But for the overweening
producer who has a run of successes behind him there comes
always the unexplainable flop to bring him down to earth again.
If he really is a good producer we must suffer a little vanity, even
megalomania, gladly; it is difficult to avoid in his position.

The film public is larger than any other, and all those who are
prominent in the Jupiter lights are prominent all over the world.
Their names are better known than that of any general,

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politician or scientist. The popular film star of either sex is
besieged by admirers. To move around incognito is impossible
for film favourites ; wherever they go they create a sensation. A
film star^ too, must be a man — or woman — of real character and
human worth if he is to keep his head amidst so much adulation.
But most of them get used to it, and when they are alone or with
a small group of friends they are simple and human again. I
have witnessed that refreshing change so often, and always with
relief and satisfaction.

At first film acting was regarded merely as a branch of stage
acting, but in reality the relation between film and stage is a
very loose one. The actor on the stage is comparatively limited
in his possibilities ; he is dependent primarily on himseLF, and he
achieves his success (or he fails) on the strength of his ability to
represent the art of the playwright. A film actor has many aids
to success, and if he is a prominent player he often has parts
written to suit him. So different is the technique involved that a
competent stage actor can fail miserably on the screen, whilst
the film star pure and simple is usually ineffective on the stage.
When the great Reinhardt turned to the film even he was a
failure, but a moderate actor of small stage parts named Emil
Jannings proved a tow’ering success on the screen. No, the screen
and the stage are two different arts, and they each follow an in-
dependent line of development. It is true that some fine stage
actors have also been successful on the screen, but this was due
to their adaptability to the new medium. On the other hand, I
don’t know’ of a single film star proper who was ever a success on
the stage. There is a genius for film acting as such, and actors
and actresses like Chaplin, Garbo and Dietrich have it in full
measure.

I w^as in a position to observe Marlene Dietrich’s career from
the beginning. As a child she w^as something of an ugly
duckling, with a plain, freckled face and long, gawky legs. But
her mother was very beautiful, and that was no doubt the
promise for the future. Very early on she showed considerable
promise as a violinist, and she left school before the normal time
to study in Weimar as a pupil of Pretorius. At the age of
sixteen she went to Berlin and secured an engagement to play
with Mischa Spoliansky’s orchestra at cinemas in the days of the

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silent film. Even at that time she was anxious to become an
actress, and she managed to secure a small part in one act of a
Reinhardt play. The scene was an evening party, and all she
had to do was to sit at a table and play, or pretend to play,
bridge. A well-known couturUre, confident that Marlene would
make her way, backed her by pro\dding a beautiful toilette.
After the dress rehearsal she returned to the dressmaker’s
despondently with the news that Reinhardt — ^in his wisdom —
had insisted that she should sit with her back to the audience.
The dressmaker’s answer was to cut the back out of the dress
down to the waist — and Reinhardt was foiled. One of Berlin’s
leading dramatic critics wrote the morning after the First Night :
‘T’m afraid I found it impossible to concentrate properly on the
performance of the star, for my eyes were glued to the enchant-
ing back of the delicious blonde at the bridge table.”

But her first real success was in Spoliansky’s revue, ^Tt’s in
the Air !” By this time the Ugly Duckling had become a Swan,
and a very beautiful one indeed (need I mention it?) and every-
one who saw her in the revue was delighted. Her success on
the stage made her ambitious to go into the films, but although
her husband (she married young), Rudolf Siebert, was employed
by the UFA company, and she therefore had some influence,
she was turned down again and again by the experts, who
unanimously declared that she was not a filmable personality —
‘‘photogenic” was the word they invented. Disappointed, she
continued to act on the stage until one day, and quite by
chance, Joseph Sternberg saw her in Georg Kaiser’s “Two Ties”
at the Berliner Theater.

Sternberg had just been commissioned to make a film of
Heinrich Mann’s well-known book “Professor Unrat”, and he
was looking for a star to play the female lead. He saw Marlene,
and was so struck that he engaged her at once — that is to say, he
was xvilling to engage her at once, but Marlene had been
intimidated by the foolish experts. She was beginning to make a
name for herself on the stage, and she felt disinclined to
sacrifice a promising stage career for the possibility of a failure
on the screen. It took all the joint powers of persuasion of
Mischa Spoliansky and Joe Sternberg to bring her round, but in
the end she agreed. The rest you know. The film was called

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

“The Blue Anger*. It was a tremendous success, and Marlene
became instantly famous, and thenceforth her popularity was
unexampled.

As so often in theatrical and film matters, luck played a big
role. It was sheer good fortune that brought Marlene to the
notice of Sternberg, but after that it was a combination of their
two talents which earned the success which ensued. Sternberg
was artist enough to recognize the value of the gem which
chance had cast before his eyes, and once he had it he gave it
ample opportunity to shine from every facet and in every
suitable light. Hollywood and still further success was the next
stage.

I met Marlene again in London when she was playing
opposite Robert Donat in “Knight without Armour**, produced
by Alexander Korda. She was at the height of her fame and
popularity then. If she came late into a theatre the performance
was interrupted. When she went into a restaurant the service
stopped. On the streets she ran the risk of being tom to pieces
by hysterical mobs anxious to tear her clothes up for souvenirs.
I was with her in Venice when she was literally mobbed by a
distinguished international public, and things might have gone
badly for her had not a strong force of police intervened
vigorously to save her from the clutches of her adorers. I have
seen similar, though fortunately not such violent scenes, with
her as their centre, in Salzburg, Paris and Cap Antibes. She
was always refreshingly calm, standing in the middle of the
adoringly threatening crowds, smiling and conducting herself
always with great natural dignity.

She was well aware of her powers, and she did not hesitate to
use them when the situation made it appear desirable. On one
occasion we drove up to the Restaurant Fouquet when the
Champs Elysees was closed by the police for some reason or the
other. Immediately a group of police rushed up threateningly,
and I felt very uncomfortable. “Leave it to me,” Marlene
whispered. “I*U settle that.*’ And she opened the door of the
car and put one foot out directly on to the pavement, remaining
seated with the other in the car and smiling bewitchingly at the
angry policemen. Whether it was the beautiful smile or the
fabulous leg in a wonderful silk stocking visible well above the
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

knee, or a combination of both, I don’t know, but the
atmosphere changed in an instant. All those irritable policemen
suddenly remembered that they were very gallant French
gentlemen with an eye for beauty, and with the greatest possible
politeness we were escorted to a convenient parking place just
round the nearest corner, and not a word was said which
sounded in the least like me amende.

When a person becomes the ideal of many and his conduct
determines that of the majority, then that person is a genius.
Marlene was such a genius. No one has ever outdone her on the
films. She was greatly blessed by nature from the start : from
the tips of her well-manicured toe-nails to the crow’n of her
lovely head of hair she is beautiful — and everything is genuine,
I can vouch for that. However, nothing is so good that it can’t
be improved, and Marlene has enriched the cosmetic armoury
of the beautiful woman. Her high cheekbones have become an
attribute of beauty ; her horizontal shoulders have set a lasting
fashion, and to this day the elegant woman pads the shoulders
of her costumes to achieve that line. Marlene has very long
finger-nails. One night in Venice one of them split. Oh,
catastrophe ! I had to knock up a dentist to splint the parts with
dental cement,

Marlene has a voice whose tone is reminiscent of a cracked
pot, and yet when she sings her public is enthralled, and her
records are sold in enormous numbers. Not only did she use
her admitted beauty to the greatest advantage, but she was
clever enough to use what are usually regarded as blemishes
with equal effect: her prominent cheekbones, her square
shoulders, her voice — everything has gone to make up her
unique and fascinating personality. The idol of millions and the
ideal of feminine beauty and grace, it would have been under-
standable and almost forgivable if she had suffered from
swollen head, but Marlene never did. She became neither
proud nor arrogant, and she never gave herself airs. Amongst
her friends, in whose company she feels more at home than
anywhere, she has always remained the same friendly, charming
modest Marlene, and none of her old practical housewifely
qualities have vanished. She is a good mother, a loyal wife and
a devoted fiiend. She will still talk with you animatedly about

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the right way to prepare the nockerl for the goulasch, and she
still cooks and bakes with all her old interest and concentration.
And how well she cooks !

The art of the film producer is quite different from that of the
stage producer. A stage play wiU not permit of all too many
libertieSj and a good one stands in no need of them. The art of
the stage producer must be firmly based on the art of the play-
wright within the limited possibilities of stage technique. But
the film producer can let his imagination run riot; unlimited
technical accessories are at his disposal, and the art of deception
is much easier to practise on the screen than on the stage. A
film is made up out of a multiplicity of mosaic work which is
fitted together and fused into an artistic whole by the genius of
the producer. The Aristotelian trinity of time, space and action
has no validity for the film. If a transition is needed for text
or action there are a hundred and one ways of providing it in
the film and enriching the whole with new ideas.

Joseph Sternberg was a producer whose instinctive feeling
for the possibilities of the film and whose knowledge of its
technique were unerring. He was a little man of slight build
with small, lively eyes and a generous growth of hair. The rapid
changes of beard and moustache styles often camouflaged him
almost out of recognition. He is an artist of fine feeling and
subtle taste with a high sense of artistic responsibility. To
watch him at work means to marvel at his thoroughness and his
foresight. He knows the capacities of his actors intimately and
he can get the last ounce out of them. He is a great producer
who can get striking results with an economy of efert and
material.

Gabriel Pascal is a different type entirely, both in appearance
and in methods. He has the broad build of an athlete who has
let himself grow a trifle over-plump. He is a human symphony
in black, with raven hair, a dark complexion like a gypsy, two
eyes like coals which belie the plump friendliness of his face and
seem to look right through you. He is a dynamic personality
with an unrestrained phantasy. He knows clearly what he
wants from the start, but the means he adopts to obtain his
results change constantly, until finally he has decided which
method is best suited to his aim. He uses his personnel, both
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technical and artistic, to the full, and is never wholly satisfied.
Until his masterpiece is finished he is like an elemental force
which nothing can hold up.

Sir Alexander Korda is quite different again. His methods
remind me of Reinhardt’s. At work he is calm and consistent.
Everything he does is carefully thought out, planned and
regulated. There is nothing capricious about him. It is
impressive to observe how a youngster from a simple old-world
Hungarian village like Puszta Paszto has grown into a man who
has learned to think and act on the grand scale, ignoring all
petty arguments and motives. Only a man who has grown up
without a tradition can create in the grand and independent
manner, free of all prejudices, which characterizes Korda’s
work. Originally he was a journalist, and it is no doubt to that
he owes the firm grip on reality which all his productions show.
He is swift to seize an idea out of a hint. On one occasion he
was in a taxi held up in a traffic jam. The Cockney driver cheer-
fully passed the time by singing a popular music-hall hit
immortalizing the marital foibles of Henry VIII. For Korda
it was the germ of a great idea. Henry VIII still lives in the
memory of the ordinary people. He is a popular monarch.
Let’s film him. And his epoch-making British film ‘‘The
Private Life of Henry VIII”, with Charles Laughton in the title
role, was the result.

There were British films before Korda, but the climax of a
greater birth was undoubtedly due to him. In one respect he is
very different from most other film producers. A good ‘^box
office” is not his aim and object. He strives to produce films of
high artistic quality in the belief that that, too, must pay. He
has been right. He is a man of large conceptions rather than
careful details. Others can fill those in if necessary. I am
convinced that in any walk of life demanding a broad outlook
and great organizational talent Alexander Korda would have
made his mark.

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

CHAPTER IX

LISZT, THOMAN AND THE HUNGARIANS

Franz Liszt, himself a born Hungarian proud of his origin,
once declared in an essay that there was no original, or
“native” Hungarian music, and that what was generally
known as Hungarian music was, in fact, Oriental music im-
ported from Eg>T>t by the Gypsies, which had, despite its
acclimatization, never lost its original Oriental character. This
contention produced a storm of controversy in Hungary. The
Magyar thinks a very great deal of his music, and Liszt’s state-
ment was an enormity, and unacceptable despite the great
musical authority of its protagonist. The only effective argu-
ment the Hungarians could use against him was no argument
at all; it consisted of excommunicating him as a Hungarian.

Liszt doesn’t seem to have taken this bell, book and candle
business very much to heart, and he continued to live his far
from penitential life flitting from one capital city to the next,
returning when it suited him to his base in Weimar to rest and
devote himself to new^ compositions (and to Princess Wittgen-
stein). As Liszt showed no signs of capitulating, the Hun-
garians approached him and did their utmost to get him to
withdraw his verdict on their music. After all, he was a Hun-
garian and becoming more and more famous, and the Hun-
garians were very anxious to claim him for their country and
be proud of him without any disagreeable flavour. However,
not only did Liszt refuse to go to Canossa, but he refused to
make any concession which might have saved the face of the
Hungarian pandits. As they were more anxious to have him
back in Hungary than he was to return, the excommunication
just had to be forgotten, and Liszt was finally persuaded, with
all sorts of promises and concessions, to take up his residence in
Budapest, where he lived for some years, as a result of which
the town became one of the world centres of music. Students
thronged from all parts to the newly founded High School for
Music, and it was here that Ansorge, Lamond, Sauer, Ilona
Eibenschuetz, Reisenauer, Rosenthal and many other notable
musicians were trained.

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Amongst them was an infant prodigy named Stephan
Thoman. He was born in Ungvar (Uzsorod), one of the filter
stations of the Austrian Jews moving to the west from the north-
east of the old double monarchy either via Hungary or via
Lemberg (Lvov) or Cracow to Vienna. They spread like a
stratum of fertilizer over Europe. Leschettzky, Kreisler, Rein-
hardt, Hubermann, Schnabel, Muni, Bergner, the Kordas,
and, indirectly, Yehudi Menuhin were amongst them. And on
Russian soil only a little way aw^ay was Anton Rubinstein,
whom many placed above his contemporary Liszt, the great
virtuoso of the piano. And “Americans” like Irving Berlin,
Sam Goldwyn, Czukor and Lubitsch often prefer to be “from
Vienna”, or Budapest, or New York, but in reality they all
come from that truly blessed spot in the north-east of Austria.
An enormous amount of beauty and happiness has come to the
world from that geographical corner, held in abhorrence by
many conventional souls as the breeding-ground of European
Jewry^s latest migration. Even a great soldier, the “Australian”
General Monash, came from this quarter, where his parents and
their parents had printed prayer-books for the local s^magogues.
Men and women full of drive and initiative have come from
there, suddenly, after many, many centuries of life in peasant sur-
roundings, a life without excess and strongly tinged by spiritual
and religious influences, to pour into the west and expend their
dynamic pent-up forces and give more than they receive.

Stephan Thoman was one of them. Liszt recognized his great
talent immediately, and admired his nobility of character. He
treated him not merely as a pupil, but as a friend, often sending
the younger man to represent him. After the death of Liszt,
Thoman took over all his treasures, and guarded them until
he himself died. He upheld the great tradition of Liszt, and in
his home there was a special room of Liszt relics. Not only did
the house hold these priceless memorials, but the whole spirit
of it seemed informed by the personality and the greatness of
Liszt. No biographer of Liszt could afford to miss this museum,
which is the equal of that other and more famous museum in
Weimar. Thoman could talk animatedly about each exhibit
with intimate knowledge, and, as he talked, the artistic genius
and warm humanity of his great friend seemed to live again.

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But Thoman was no blind worshipper of Liszt. He told me
that the famous virtuosit>^ of technique with which Liszt
astounded the world had long been outdated, and that a really
talented pupil of our day would equal Liszt's technique. For
an international performer Liszt’s piano technique would no
longer be sufficient, would no longer satisfy a sophisticated con-
cert public. Kreisler told me the same of the famous Paganini’s
technique: it would fail to satisfy present-day international
concert demands. These are no attempts to denigrate the
extraordinary performances of earlier geniuses. Notliing stands
still, and certainly not the technique of music. As it advances
so the demands on it grow.

Stephan Thoman was a short and rather frail little man
with a dolichocephalous head. He was not a good-looking man
by any means, but his powerful nose, his great dark eyes and
his neat beard made his appearance striking. And once he had
begun to speak there was no doubt left that here was a real
personality. He came from a well-to-do family, lus wife brought
money into the marriage, and his own income from music was
very considerable, so all in all he was in a position to help very
many needy students of music and others, and he did so liber-
ally. He was always ready to support any artistic talent,
whether it was musical or not. It was he who first discovered
the artistic talent of a lad named Philip Laufer, the son of very
humble parents. He got him commissions and enabled him to
continue his studies in Munich. The lad justified the confidence
Thoman had in his artistic ability and he made an inter-
national name for himself, particularly in this country. You
certainly know him better as Philip de Laszlo. In England he
strapped on a terrific armour of snobbishness, but it says some-
thing for his character that he never forgot the debt he owed
to Thoman, and he spoke about it readily to the end of his
days. Apart from this one chink, Philip de Laszlo was the most
high and mighty pictor laureatus of English high society. His
imposing Hampstead studio is now the Catholic chapel of Sir
Thomas More.

Thoman was more than a pianist, but his special love w^as for
the piano. He had small, almost quadratic hands, with short,
stumpy fingers, in most striking contrast to the long fingers of
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Ms friend and master Liszt. It seemed almost impossible tJiat
with such hands he could play whole octave passages with
tremendous virtuosity, but he could and did. Other pianists
amongst my friends have (or had) rather similar hands — for
instance, D’ Albert, Busoni and Schnabel. When Emil Orlik
was doing his Beethoven etchings he took the hands of the great
pianist Ansorge as his model. I don’t know whether the ortho-
dox chirologists regard this quadratic muscular type of hand,
with its shortish and almost uniform fingers and short, thick
thumb, as characteristic for exceptional talent, but in my ex-
perience it is so, tliough, of course, there are exceptions — ^for
instance, the hands of Einstein, which are almost feminine 'with
their long and rather pointed fingers.

Thoman’s chief genius lay, I think, in his teaciiing. The
piano talent of Hungary for the past fifty years can be looked
upon directly or indirecdy as his pupils : Jolanda Mer5, Ernst
von Dohnanyi, Zoltan Kodaly and Bela Bartok, to mention
only the more prominent. Dohnanyi was another infant
prodigy. He gave his first concert at the age of five, and by the
time he was eighteen he was world famous. His technique and
his musicality were equally extraordinary. As a young man he
had to compete internationally with such giants of the inter-
national concert hall as D’Albert, Busoni, Carenno, Moritz
Rosenthal, Emil Sauer, Alfred Gruenfeld, Ansorge and Pade-
rewsky. He had one advantage over them all, and that was his
absolute lack of any concert inhibitions, embarrassment or shy-
ness, and the ease and naturalness of his attitude was con-
veyed to his audiences and put them at their ease completely.
To listen to Dohnanyi was to relax. Whether he was playing to
a small circle of friends or in a great concert hall before an
audience of many hundreds made no difference whatever to
him or his playing. One had the feeling that the public was just
not there for him and that he was playing for his own pleasure.

But later on Dohnanyi suffered a sudden psychological
inhibition. Up to his twenty-fifth year nervousness had been
absolutely unknown to him, and then, just before a concert in
Stockholm, he was so overcome with fright tliat the concert had
to be called off. For ten years after this event Dohnanyi made
no public appearances at all. Chopin was another artist who

Janos y The Story of a Doctor

suffered a similar experience, except that in his case it lasted the
rest of his life* A concert he gave in Paris proved such an ordeal
that he never appeared before the public again. In Dohnanyi’s
case the attack was a blessing in disguise, for in those ten years
he devoted himself to composition and deepening his musical
knowledge. To-day he is the very active head of the Budapest
High School for Music.

In 1910 Thoman was in Berlin, and during that visit he told
me about a remarkable youngster who had come to him as a
pupil. "'A regular little crackpot’’, as he described him. It
appeared that this young pupil simply ignored all the rules of
music, harmony and contrapuntal arrangement and took no
notice of time or signature. “I just wouldn’t have taken him but
he plays the piano marvellously.” The youngster w^as Bela Bar-
tok, to-day one of the leading modernist composers. Apart from
being a musician of character who refuses to be limited by any
orthodoxy, Bartok is also a man of civil courage. When the
Horthy regime passed the first anti-liberal ordinances he drew
up his roots and w^'ent to the United States. Bartok’s strength,
like that of his friend Kodaly, lies in the music of the people.
Together the two wrote one of the most remarkable books of
musical literature. It threw new light on Hungarian folk music.
They contended that what was generally recognized as “Folk
Music” was not authentic, and that quite independent of this
“Ersatz Music” there really was a folk music amongst the
peasants, an older and more beautiful music shared by the
Himgarian, Slovakian and Roumanian peasants. It was from
this older folk music with its deviating tonal scale that Bartok
drew inspiration for his modernist compositions.

I first met Kodaly by chance. I had just arrived in Meran
when I heard tliat Toscanini was conducting the Psalmus
Himgaricus at the Scala that evening. I immediately went on
to Milan, and anived at the concert hall shortly before the
beginning of the concert. There was not a ticket left, and
Toscanini had a chair placed for me with the orchestra. After
tlie performance he receives very few people in his dressing-
room because, after the rigours of conducting, he, like most
conductors, changes. When I came in the Olympian was rub-
bing himself dowm furiously with a towel and ejaculating
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enthusiastic comments about Kodaly's wonderful piece. He
was still full of it and seemed delighted to have conducted it.
Standing there listening to this stream of praise and delight
was a modest-looking little man of frail build with a small,
reddish beard who seemed not to know where to look. He was
still wearing a rather sun-bleached overcoat, and he twiddled
a wide-brimmed soft felt hat in his hands helplessly.

That was Kodaly. As helpless as a child and with the serene
eyes of a chosen spirit. He found his tongue only later on when
we were all seated in the restaurant Cova with a good meal and
a bottle of Chianti, and he felt more comfortable. Then he
began to answer Toscanini’s eager questions concerning the
orchestration, the nature of tlie variations and the general spirit
in which the piece was conceived. But he still seemed a little
lost and embarrassed, and he explained that the performance
had been an experience for him too. In Toscanini’s hands it
had taken on a new and wonderful character, and he had not
yet grasped it all himself. I have noticed this with composers
more than once. Richard Strauss was often really surprised at
the beauty of his own music when he first heard it interpreted
by a better conductor than himself — that is, by Weingartner,
Muck or Fritz Busch.

The two friends Bartdk and Kodaly, who might be compared
with the brothers Grimm for their keen professional interest in
the peasantry, are phenomena almost entirely independent of
orthodox Hungarian musical life, which revolves around the
founder of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, Count Albert
Apponyi, a highly educated man with a wide knowledge of
music. The beginnings of musical education in Budapest were
very modest, almost poverty-stricken. There was a private con-
servatorium for music, and twice a week operas were given in
the National Theatre. The music world was ruled by Franz
Erkel, the composer of the Hungarian National Anthem. No
one had a chance to develop in his orbit, with the result that
any independent talent was driven out of the country, and this
happened, for instance, to Hans Richter (Richard Wagner’s
great collaborator was a Hungarian), who gave up his post in
Hungary very regretfully, for he was devoted to the Hungarian
countryside, and particularly to his father’s estate in Feher-

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

megye on the Danube. Richter’s influence on the development
of music in England was very great, and the traces of his
activities in Manchester and Edinburgh are visible to-day. He
always remained loyal to his own country, which he loved, and
when I met him he still spoke Hungarian absolutely fluently.

The narrowness and inadequacy of this situation ended with
the foundation of the Royal Opera in 1885 and the opening of
the High School for Music. That is to say, the situation much
improved, but it was still not altogether satisfactory. The
cancer of small States is nepotism, often complicated and
aggravated by chauvinism. In such circumstances the test is
not one of value, and unless a talented man happens to have
the other qualifications necessary to make him acceptable in
the eyes of the little panjandrums he has no chance of making
his way. Franz Erkel’s son was a talented conductor, but no
more, and his abilities were incomparably below those of men
like Arthur Nikisch, also a Hungarian, and Gustav Mahler, but
Nikisch was unable to find a place for himself, and after only a
year Mahler had to give up the direction of the Opera House
to make way for a mediocrity like Raoul Mader. The Budapest
Opera became a sort of trial theatre. Innumerable talented
artists won their spurs there and then went out into the world.

The fault does not lie with the Budapest theatre public,
wliich is both understanding and critical. It is not easy to pass
muster in their eyes. They form their own judgments and they
are not to be intimidated by international reputations. On one
occasion when Caruso sang in Budapest he was out of voice. It
would have been better had he not sung at all. The Budapest
public barracked him. It was the only failure of his career,
and, as he admitted subsequently, it was deserved. The same
thing happened to no less a soprano than the great Galli-
Curci. The singers at the opera changed frequently, but the
orchestra was unique, and many of its members took part regu-
larly in the Bayreuth Festspiele, to mention only the great
harpist Mosshammer and the cellist David Popper.

Popper was an inspired performer — and the meanest man I
have ever known. He was mistrustful, suspicious, sarcastic and
witty. He practically kept his family at starvation level, and I
had the devil’s own job to get enough money out of him to
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secure proper attention for his only son, a sick lad. He was not
short of money ; on the contrary, he had a very good income
from his playing, from his compositions and from his students.
When Popper played in Vienna and his impresario came into
his dressing-room the first question he asked was how much had
been taken at the box-office. In one respect he was quite
generous ; he let me hear his practising without charging me for
it, and on the evenings he was playing at the opera he would let
me use his free ticket. That meant quite a lot to me, because I
was only a student at the time and not over-flush with money.

Later on as a young doctor I had a welcome opportunity of
extending my musical knowledge when I treated the music
teacher Carl Agghazy in his serious illness which caused him
to be bed-ridden, like Heine “imprisoned in a mattress vaulf
Agghazy’s reputation was made with his six-volume piano
school which in some respects even outdid the popularity of
Czerny’s school. At the conservatorium he taught the principles
of composition, and he orchestrated many pieces without his
name ever appearing. Dvorak may have played a similarly
modest rdle towards Johannes Brahms, whom he assisted with
the instrumentation. In every respect Agghazy was a modest
and retiring character who lived only for his art and was little
interested in reputation and fame.

Hubay, like Agghazy, was a student of the Brussels Con-
servatoire. Hubay was a pupil of Vieuxtemps, whose successor
he became. The daughter of Vieuxtemps married a Polish
doctor named Landauer, who adopted the French form
Landouzy. Landouzy was tubercular, and he ascribed the
longevity of tubercular Jews in North Africa not only to the
favourable climate there, but also to the liberal consumption of
garlic (in which, incidentally, there may be more than a grain
of truth). He therefore decided to found a garlic sanatorium in
Tunis. He went there with his wife, her father Vieuxtemps and
the latter’s pupil Hubay, who was also consumptive and was
glad to kill two birds with one stone ; live with the master and
at the same time treat his own sickness. Agghazy, who suffered
from a spinal complaint, also came to the sanatorium, and was
responsible for the instrumentation of the compositions of
Vieuxtemps and Hubay. Incidentally, the most beautiful

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

worlcs of both of them derive from this period. Agghazy’s share
remains in obscurity.

Unlike Agghazy, Hubay loved the limelight. For a time he
succeeded Vieuxtemps at the Brussels Academy^ but he soon
returned to Hungary, where he became the national composer
after Erkef s death, and the Director of the High School for
Music. Amongst his best-known pupils were Joseph Szigety
and Franz von Vecsey. Hubay suffered from poor health all
his life until his death a few years ago. He married the Countess
Czebrian, who made herself responsible for seeing that the
doctor’s orders were as punctiliously fulfilled as possible, for the
pair kept open house for the artistic world of Hungary. At
exactly ten minutes to ten on evenings when they were enter-
taining, the great double doors of the saloon would open and a
liveried servant would advance towards his master with great
dignity bearing a huge silver tray on which was one glass of
water and a small envelope. The ceremony naturally aroused
great interest amongst those not in the know, whereupon the
Countess would let it be clearly known that the doctor had
ordered the master to take his medicine ten minutes before
retiring. The hint was invariably sufficient, and by ten o'clock
peace reigned in the old aristocratic palace of the Czebrians.

I have always remained in close contact with the Hungarian
music world and with the developing talents of each succeeding
generation. Thanks to my close relations with the professorial
collegium in Budapest, promising students who came to Berlin
to finish their studies were always sent to me, and I am glad to
say that I have often been able to lend a helping hand to those
who needed it. I helped them into the saddle, so to speak, but
they rode themselves — or fell off. In most professions there are
compromises by which a man can keep his head above water or
even win moderate success, but not in art. Art knows no com-
promises, and even the talented mediocrity is doomed to dis-
appear sooner or later. Any talented young man out to con-
quer the world should humbly remember that there are perhaps
half-a-dozen artists in the world who can fill the Albert Hiill
on their ownreputation : Toscanini, Kreisler, Gigli, Menuliinand
Tauber amongst them. Not many more. There are others who
will in the future — ^but again not many.

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Genius can show itself in the child, for there is no art in
which talent manifests itself so early as in music. There was one
youngster whose short career I followed at close hand from
childhood to early death : that was Ernst von Lengyel. He was
the seventh child of an unhappy marriage. When the parents
finally separated, the husband left his wife with a seven-year-old
daughter and little Ernst, who was then two and a half. The
household was a very modest one, and the mother made ends
meet by giving piano lessons. At the same time she taught her
own daughter. Little Ernst was often in the room playing with
liis toys during these lessons. The mother would correct the
daughter when she played a false note by calling out the right
note, and one day when she was out of the room she heard her
daughter play a fklse note only to be corrected immediately by
little Ernst. At the age of five he played a Mozart piano con-
certo at the Queen’s Hall conducted by Hans Richter. That
fact means a lot, for Hans Richter loathed infant prodigies, but
he gave way humbly in the presence of a genius of Ernst von
Lengyel’s calibre, whose absolute sense of pitch was perfectly
developed before he could talk properly.

Ernst von Lengyel had a marvellous musical memory ; an
even better one than Sir Thomas Beecham’s, which is almost
photographic; I think he could dictate Gibbon’s ^‘Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire” straight off. Ernst von Lengyel had
only to read a partitur through once and he could then sit down
at the piano and play it through. Unfortunately he was always
ailing. He suffered from a severe exudative diathese, and his
public appearances had therefore to be reduced to a minimum.
When he played to a circle of musical experts he required no
notes. He could play any of the normal repertoire for hours on
end without error. He had no intellectual interests. In his free
time he would go to church and pray, or learn the railway
guide off by heart as a recreation. He knew when every train
left and when it arrived — that is to say, when every train ought
to leave and arrive. Not long ago I came across a somewhat
similar case: a very talented violinist who knew the tonnage
of each ship on Lloyds Register, and was at the same time a
compendium of erudite information on yacht-building.

Ernst von Lengyel died at the early age of nineteen years

33 *

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

from pulmonary tuberculosis. I performed the autopsy. In
those days, unfortunately, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Cerebral Research did not exist. It was there, in Buch, near
Berlin, that Leninas brain was cut into microscopic slices and
examined. All I could find was that von Lengyel’s frontal lobes
were exceptionally developed, particularly the left lobe, whilst
the cerebral ventricles were moderately extended.

Music is regarded as a transcendental art, and apart from the
almost arithmetical construction of the fugue form this is per-
haps true. Every other art is more or less related to nature, but
music lacks this natural parameter. A painting of Praxiteles is
said to have deceived the very birds of the air, which attempted
to peck at the fruits he had painted ; architecture can look like
a rock ; the more sculpture approaches nature the greater it is ;
poetry is greatest when it shows us the world at its truest (in
naturalism), at its most beautiful (in fantastic poetry) — but
always it is the world, i.e,^ nature, which is the basis. But music
must live on itself. Nature has no analogy to the three chief
attributes of music : rhythm, melody and harmony.

Other arts produced great works of genius even thousands of
years ago — the pyramids and the acropolis, the works of
Praxiteles and Phydias, Euripides and Sophocles — but music as
we know it to-day, with its memorable works of genius, is a
very late comer. Not that music as such is so very recent. The
days of classic antiquity were not without music. Amongst the
Greeks it was represented by Orpheus and even by a God,
Apollo. The relation of music to architecture (Amphion built
Thebes to the sound of the lyre) and to nature was no secret
to the ancients. But whilst that is true, the music of those early
classic days was not the music we know' and love. And the
music of our day is perhaps no more than a beginning, no more
than the rudiments of what is still to come. Its previous de-
velopment went from the primitive melody to the classic form ;
from the classic form to the subjective romantic. And to-day
we have atonal music, and that perhaps is nothing but an
episode on the way. Much of this development has taken place
during my lifetime, and I have been a keen and enthusiastic
observer.

Art, it is said, is the most perfect form for the expression of
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The Theatre, Art, Music and ^England

human emotion. The form of expression naturally depends on
the spirit of the age^ and from that no artist, no matter how
transcendental his genius, can entirely free himself. This spirit
of the time is ahead of the feelings and the understanding of the
masses of the people. It lasts between twenty and thirty years
before the masses have reached the place their leaders occupy,
and by that time those leaders are another twenty or thirty
years ahead. I am discussing music here, but think for a
moment of painting. How amused, if not angry, was the
general public at the beginning of the century with the work
of the impressionists ! And what clever jokes were cracked at
their expense ! And how long did it take before the cautious
authorities were prepared to remove the works of Rodin from
the Luxembourg to the Louvre? We are experiencing exactly
the same phenomenon to-day with regard to music. By the
time some of us had arrived at an appreciation of Richard
Strauss, Debussy and Ravel, the main contingent had not yet
struggled forward as far as Stravinsky. Other contemporaries,
like Schoenberg, Prokofiev^ Kfzenek, Schostakovitsch, Walton,
and even Bartok, have had to fight hard for recognition. The
main contingent is slow in recognizing anything strange because
it is, so to speak, in another language, a language they have not
yet learnt.

CHAPTER X

KREISLER, HUBERMANN AND MENUHIN

Parish doctor in a poverty-stricken suburb of Vienna, Dr
Kreisler found it no easy task to maintain the family he had
brought with him from the north of Austria. Perhaps his suc-
cess as a medical man was hindered to some extent by his
passionate love for music, and he certainly regarded his quartet
evenings with his special friend Johannes Brahms and with Pro-
fessor Billroth, one of the pioneers of modern surgery, as much
more important, or, at least, much more interesting than the
dismal nights in the labour ward. Brahms was the centre of the
flourishing musical life of Vienna which meant so- much to Dr
Kreisler. Above all, he longed to have children with whom he

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

could one day play ; have his own quartet, for instance. It was
undoubtedly with this ardent desire in his mind that his chil-
dren, Fritz, Ella and Hugo, were conceived.

Is there such a thing as the conscious influencing of con-
ception? Even at the risk of being dubbed a mystic, which is
usually considered an insult for a serious scientist, I will confess
that I am inclined to believe in the possibility of a psychic
influencing of the unborn child at conception. To quote only
one practical instance which goes to support such a view : the
wicked cuckoo is able by taking what must be the equivalent
of thought to produce eggs camouflaged to tone into the nest
of the unwilling and unconscious foster-parents, who would
otherwise eject the intruding egg indignantly.

Conception is a purposeful phenomenon as far as nature is
concerned. And when over and above that it aims at influenc-
ing the later make-up of its fruit, this will may well take on liv-
ing flesh — up to a point. No truth is absolute, and neither is
this. However, it strikes me as noteworthy that generally
speaking illegitimate children (usually unwanted) play no very
distinguished role in the world. Here too, of course, there are
exceptions : the great Boccaccio, for instance, was the son of a
French merchant and an Italian light of love, and Schopen-
hauer’s great predecessor, the French epigrammatic philosopher
Chamfort, was the son of an unmarried governess, father un-
known. The bastard in Shakespeare is something of a villain,
but he is usually a highly intelligent, capable and, all in all, a
rather attractive personality goaded by fierce ambition, like
Edmund in ‘‘King Lear”. Shakespeare is obviously sympathetic
with the bastard just as in a passing prick of conscience he sides
with the Jew Shylock, but he sacrifices Edmund to the common
notion just as in the end he abandons Shylock to the cold con-
tempt of cruel mediocrities. Edmund the bastard appeals to
his common humanity almost as Shylock does (“Hath not a
Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions?”) : “Why bastard? Wherefore base? When
my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous, and
my shape as true, as honest madam’s issue? Why brand they
us . . . who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take more com-
position and fierce quality than doth, with a dull, stale, tired
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and Englatid

bed, go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, got ’tween asleep
and wake?”

But there is a point usually overlooked in the argument —
namely, that not all children born in holy wedlock are legiti-
mate in their conception. How often are such bastards of an
illegitimate night of love safely born to their naughty mamas
in the secure haven of their marriage and brought up with all
the love and care rightly the due of the official scions of the
house? That is a question no one can answer. But for the in-
vestigator it must always be a point of great importance
whether the influence at work in conception comes from a
long-established emotional tendency or from an ephemeral
mood — whether it is, in other words, chronic or acute.

It would take too long to discuss the question in all its
aspects, but the fact most clear in the present case, the Kreisler
family, the ardent wish of the father, bore fruit in both his sons,
who each came into the world with exceptional musical ability.
Hugo Kreisler was no less brilliant as a cello player than was
his brother Fritz as a violinist, but unfortunately he died early
of nephritis. His was a care-free, artistic nature of heaven-sent
gaiety, a product of musical genius, Vienna atmosphere and
inborn Bohemianism. His plump, amiable face beamed good
nature.

His brother Fritz was a strong, healthy lad, and as far as I
know he was never ill until he met with his unfortunate accident
in New York. He was highly talented, and his talents revealed
themselves very early. His first public performance was given
at the age of seven — I believe in Cracow — so that he too was a
infant prodigy. He was patronized by the Austrian and Meck-
lenburg aristocracy, who provided the means for his training
and sent him to Paris, where he was placed in the care of the
Jesuits. He was baptized a Catholic and brought up in the
faith of the One True Church. This led to the uninformed
asserting that he could have stayed on in Germany after Hitler
came to power if he had wanted to, as he had not a drop of
Jewish blood in his veins. As a cynical colleague remarked, he
must in that case have been more anaemic than he looked.

His Jesuit education profoundly influenced his musical de-
velopment as well as giving him a sound classical education.

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

Under its influence he studied the music of the traditional
church choirs, and certainly many of his subsequent themes
derive from Vivaldi, Scarlatti and others whose works he un-
earthed in his youth. He was much drawn to the music of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and he even published
many of his own original compositions under the names of
various more or less obscure composers of that period, a fact
which he revealed on his sixtieth birthday. Extremely irritated
by having been deceived by his ^'Classical Manuscripts’’, the
English newspapers in particular were very harsh in their con-
demnation of this really quite innocent subterfuge. Kreisler
was anxious, and quite rightly, to play his own compositions,
but it would have embarrassed him to see his own name fre-
quently as composer on his own programmes. He is not a vain
and limelight-loving personality, and this simple trick helped
him out of a difficulty. He was just the opposite of a plagiarist.
He had not ploughed his field with the ox of a neighbour and
called it his own ; on the contrary, he had ploughed with his
own ox and called it his neighbour’s. No very serious offence
surely? The indignation, I fear, was not so moral, but more the
result of irritation at having been taken in.

The compositions themselves are classical pearls of violin
notation, and that, after all, is what matters. Kreisler has no
need to borrow musical ideas from other sources. He once
showed me a drawerful of musical sketches : compositions and
themes which needed working out. They had been jotted down
summarily at the insistence of his wife Harriet. When I, too,
tried to persuade him to develop one or two of the more striking
ones at least, he shrugged his shoulders. ^Tor me every theme
is the result of some experience : love, alcohol, depression or
catastrophe. It is always the reaction to some emotional mood.
Once the mood has passed it can’t be recaptured. It is strange
to me then ; no longer a part of my life, and therefore I can’t
take up its expression again. Perhaps others can. I can’t.”
And that is true. Kreisler creates on inspiration, and that is
the reason why everything he creates is fresh and natural, and
made all of one piece.

He began to give concerts soon after the completion of his
schooling. He was much helped in his youth certainly, but it
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

must not be thought that his fame came easily. He had to work
hard for it, fight for it. In fact to the shame of Europe it must
be said that it was the United States which first recognized his
genius, and it was only when he was being enthusiastically
received there that Europe brought up the halting rear. Dur-
ing the last fifty years or so half the cmlized world has heard
Kreisler, He is a man who smiles frequently and infectiously,
and there is something of the happy gypsy in his appearance.
His eyes are clear and lively. His hair is black and bushy, with
a slight wave. His nose is broad, and his forehead slopes
slightly backwards, whilst his chin juts forward a little, giving
the head a rather primitive but fascinating shape. The expres-
sion of his face is extraordinarily attractive, and few people are
uninfluenced by it. And as for women, he is almost mobbed
and persecuted by their adoration.

But on the concert platform his w’hole facial appearance and
his air change. His face is as though transfigured, and the
light-hearted smile is gone. He stands there on the platform
squarely, his br5ad shoulders set, his head tilted back into his
powerful neck, his eyes half closed and his brows raised. In his
left hand, swinging lightly between the second and third finger,
is his Guarneri and in his right is the bow. There is no strain,
no tension, no pose and no affectation as he waits for the
moment to raise his violin and begin. He is completely calm
and relaxed, and supremely at his ease as he waits for the
moment to release his energies, and his calmness is transferred
to his public. It is the calm and complete confidence of one
who is absolutely sure of himself and his capacities, and, in
truth, Kreisler has never disappointed his listeners. When he
is playing he is all concentration and the only unnecessary
gesture just visible to those who know is the rhythmic pouting
movement of his closed lips, a movement which continues for
a litde while after his playing is finished, the while it takes him
to recover from the trance into which he has lived and played
himself.

It is a remarkable experience to watch those racing fingers
at close hand, to observe how they go from prestissimo furioso to
the most delicate morendo as though they were almost floating
over the strings. Kreisler’s hands are much like the type I have

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

already described, with stumpy fingers — and nails bitten down
to the quick. And yet the secret of his genius does not lie in his
finger technique, as remarkable as that undoubtedly is. In fact
I think his contemporaries Kubelik or Vecsey may be even
superior to him in this. No, the secret lies in his bow. With the
bow he sings. There is never anything unbalanced or loose in
his playing. His heart is in it utterly, and, above all, he is more
than musical: he is a musician. Before he plays he sings the
whole programme through. Not that he has a beautiful voice ;
far from it, but there is something fascinating in his nasal tone.
Fritz Kreisler sings through his nose, and he strikes every note
accurately, whether the highest or the lowest. He tunes his
voice as he tunes his violin, and when he has satisfied himself,
then he goes on until he has the desired legato or staccato for
his fingers and the harmony of the accompaniment in his
brain.

On one occasion we were making a motor tour through Italy
together, and were in each other’s company practically all the
time. He was giving himself a complete rest, and he had not
touched a musical instrument since we started; not that
Kreisler is one of those musicians who has to practise two or
three hours every day ‘^to keep my fingers supple”. On the
journey back to Berlin, between Basle and Frankfort-on-Main,
Kreisler borrowed my umbrella, put the handle under his chin
and then went through the whole programme he proposed to
play (and did play) a week later in the Albert Hall. He sang
the whole programme through, playing in make-believe on my
gamp, correcting himself from time to time until he had
everything tone perfect — ^in his head. It was the only “^'instru-
ment” he touched in six weeks.

His absolute sense of pitch is infallible. To know the speed
the car w’-as making he never had to look at the speedometer.
He could tell from the tone of engine the number of revolutions
it was making, and from that he could tell the speed unerringly.
On one occasion in a biological laboratory in the United States
anopheles mosquitos infected with malaria had erroneously
been put in with mosquitos of a different species. Kreisler was
able to superintend the disentangling of the species by the
pitch of their whine in flight alone.

33S

The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

I remember travelling with him from New York to Phila-
delphia, a journey of about two hours, where he had to make
a recording in the Victoria Studios* Franz Lehar had dedi-
cated a serenade to him and to express his thanks Kreisler had
arranged to make a recording oi it* However, he found the
violin accompaniment impossible, and he spent the journey re-
composing it by singing it through to himself. In Philadelphia
we went to a second-rate hotel and took our meals in mediocre
restaurants where there was no chance of his being recognized.
Few musicians and artists are as popular as Kreisler, and
recognition means the danger of being mobbed, which he
hates. In the peace of incognito his new accompaniment was
put down on paper, and the next day the recording took place
in the studios without a hitch.

Kreisler loves all kinds of music, and where other performers
are concerned he is a generous critic. Music of quality en-
trances him. I don^t know anyone who enjoys music more —
unless it is myself. At first-rate concerts he listens as though
hypnotized, and he is not inclined to be harsh on any minor
faults of tempo or phraseology which may occur. Wagner is his
favourite musician, and he is fiUed with a profound respect for
the man’s genius. He is lavish with his praise for the brilliant
performances of his musical colleagues, and there is no trace of
professional jealousy in his make-up. But pure technical bril-
liance does not impress him ; he takes a mastery of technique
for granted. For him technique is on a par with acrobatics ; it
is not art. Artis supreme because it is the expression of feeling.
Its unique and hyper-sensual expression in gypsy music moves
him perhaps more than anything else. Y'ehudi Menuhin was
fourteen years old when he made his first appearance in Berlin,
and Kreisler and I went to the concert together. Asked after-
wards to give his impressions, Kreisler declared : “I feel rather
sorry for the boy. He has missed all the joys of mastering his
art. The rest of us have all had to fight hard for what mastery
we have attained; for Menuhin mastery has been a gift from
heaven.”

He seldom speaks of his own art unless he is urged to. Like
all great musicians, his genius is a gift, and he gives it to his
public as naturally as a stream flows into the sea. His perform-

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

ances always convey an impression of ease and effortlessness, as
though there was no such thing as a difficulty ; but, in fact, his
performance varies, and he is the sternest critic of them all as
far as his own playing is concerned. Like all great artists, he is
dependent on his own mood, whatever it may be, and I have
known him come off the platform leaving an audience raving
with enthusiasm and declare irritably, “I played like a swine”.

Once I asked him whether he had any impression of a concert
more satisfying than any other, and he replied, '‘Yes. I gave a
concert in a rather unimportant town in China. I had to stand
on a barrel as platform. The whole atmosphere struck a chord
in me, and I suddenly felt it was my duty to give this Chinese
public Beethoven at his most glorious. And I believe I did.
For several minutes after I had finished playing not a soul in
the hall moved or made a sound. It was a sort of devotional
silence. That was the most successful concert I ever gave.”

There were experiences on the other side of the account to
remind the artist that although his head was often in clouds of
glory, his feet were firmly fixed on the solid ground. One of his
concerts was so packed that the doors had to be left open in
order to permit crowds outside in the corridors to hear him
play, even though they could not see him. In the middle of a
pianissimo piece, which perhaps was hardly audible in the
corridors, he distinctly heard a penetrating voice inquiring
innocently : 'Ts he playing the fiddle or the clarinet?” It threw
Kreisler completely out of his stride for the first and only time
in his experience, and he had to stop playing to go off the plat-
form and laugh till his sides a.ched.

Another experience was when a concert which looked like
being no more than a succes (Testime was carried to the heights
of inspiration by a quite touching incident. Whilst Kreisler was
in Italy, Mussolini invited him to dinner at his villa, after which
the guest was to play for the ruler of Italy. There was no one
present but the dictator, Kreisler and his accompanist. Musso-
lini was himself an amateur of the violin, and he wanted to
enjoy Kreisler’s playing alone. Kreisler played with his usual
high sense of artistic responsibility, but with no very great
entliusiasm, and then he noticed that, as though moved by an
afterthought, Mussolini rose from his seat, tiptoed to the door
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and opened it, and then returned as noiselessly to his seat. At
first Kreisler was at a loss to explain the incident, but then he
realized that the door had been opened in order that Musso-
lini’s old housekeeper could enjoy the playing as well. This
example of simple human kindness in an unexpected quarter
moved him to the enthusiasm which had previously been lack-
ing, and he played an inspired concert.

Kreisler is one of the few performers of genius who can play
three hundred times a year before packed audiences and never
turn a hair. His honorarium for a first-class concert is hardly
less than 2,000 dollars, so that his income from concerts alone
is princely, and then in addition comes a very large sum from
his recordings. But his own compositions have often been
thrown away as far as financial gain is concerned. 'Tiebesleid”
was sold by his brother Hugo behind his back for thirty marks
to the Mainz publisher Schott, and most of his other famous
works suffered a more or less similar fate. Kreisler is a great
artist, but a poor business man — though he rather prides him-
self on his financial abilities. His most successful operetta,
“Sisi”, did not bring him in a penny piece — but it made the
theatre directors rich.

Just as easily as Kreisler plays, so he composes. I have the
original MS. of ‘‘Liebesleid” in my possession. It has been
written down as though it were a fair copy, and there is only
one correction in it. I have very often noticed that musicians
have a far better hand tlxan their colleagues of the pen. There
are partiturs of Wagner that look at first glance as though they
were copper-plate engravings, A great exception is, of course,
Beethoven. His MSS. are chaotic. In setting down his music
he remained the great anarchist.

Fritz Kreisler is a philanthropist and a lover of peace. He
suffered deeply during the first world war, and when it was
over he did his best to help heal its wounds as quickly as pos-
sible. His home town, Vienna, had much cause to be grateful
for his efforts. He is more than a man born in Vienna ; he is a
born Viennese. The cafes of Vienna are fiill of men who like
light-hearted conversation as he does. But he doesn’t care for
deadly seriousness in discussion. He is more than a pacifist ; he
is a quietist, always ready to sacrifice his own opinions — even

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his passionate ones — for the sake of peace. He is not a weakling,
merely a man devoted to peace and quiet, and it is ironic that
he should have to spend the greater part of his life going from
town to town and from country to country, always in the eye
of the public.

On those rare occasions when he can escape and be in the
company he likes and do as he pleases, then the Bohemianism
so marked in his brother Hugo comes out in Fritz. He lets him-
self go, he laughs heartily, he eats Sauerkraut with Knoedel or
^'Wuerstl mit Kren”, plays cards, gallantly kisses the hands of
ladies, enjoys a good drop of wine, expresses his opinions on
art — and even politics. In short, he lives as he would always
live if he had his own way and were not constantly under the
iron discipline imposed on the public figure. It is only in such
rare circumstances that the unspoiled simple human qualities
of Fritz Kreisler are given a chance to express themselves.

Kreisler is prepared to go a long way to maintain domestic
peace. Domestic discipline is a favourable factor in his life
because it imposes beneficial rules and regulations which he
would probably never impose on himself. I am not thinking of
his art here so much as of the gaming-tables. Most musicians I
have known have played cards almost as passionately as they
have played their instrvments. Gambling seems to belong to
the natural liistory of the musician. At one time I used to
wonder why the musical world always made Sils Maria its
holiday headquarters, until one summer I went there myself
and entered the Hotel Edelweiss. No world congress of music
could have attracted more musicians than the glass-covered
veranda of the Edelweiss, where table after table was occupied
by the Central European masters of the piano, the violin and
the score, all of them passionately engrosssed in their hands. I
should think that Richard Strauss holds the endurance record
in card-playing. His first question when he comes to a new
town is not about the venue of his concert, but where he can
get in his hand of Skat. Geheimrath Deutsch, who was always
his host when he was in Berlin, invariably organized relief
parties of players so that Strauss could play to his heart’s con-
tent, which was always much longer than one set of players
would willingly have obliged him.

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But Kreisler has other interests besides music and card-
playing, For one thing, he is a collector of rare books, and his
knowledge of the byways of bibliography is considerable. He
is also greatly interested in the mysteries of natural science,
and he does his best in the time available to him to do quite a
deal of study in that direction. He is very fond of children, and
in many respects he is as helpless as they are — the younger ones.
The man whose hands and fingers are so trained as to produce
the finest nuances with the utmost certainty can hardly knock
in a nail (and it’s as well not to let him try), drive in a screw or
pack a case. I remember him once after a concert trying to
pack up his few things in a case amply large enough to take
them, and being reduced to despair and outside assistance
before the case could be packed and closed.

A man like that needs a w^ife to look after him, and Kreisler
has a very efficient one. Her role is necessarily that of guardian
angel. Kreisler is devoted to his angel, and philosophically
accepts the guardianship. Harriet looks after his social obliga-
tions, ensures that he can enjoy his material possessions in
peace, and sees to it that his household runs smoothly. To look
after Fritz is her life, and she devotes it all to him. She signs
all his contracts, and I have sometimes suspected that she signs
his autographs too. She ‘‘gives” his concerts; all he has to do
is to mount the platform and play. She clears every difficulty
out of his path, watches over his health, checks his weight
according to the American custom, arranges his day for him
and watches every step of the dreamer. From long experience
she knows that it is better not to let him out of her sight for
long, and if she did he would be uncomfortable. It is only
w'hiist Harriet is within reach that Fritz feels quite secure.

It is clear that discipline, however benevolent, produces re-
sistance sometimes. Kreisler is no different from any other man
in that respect, but he is not fool enough to resist for long ; he
is too well aware of how salutary the discipline is. I have often
felt that the more a man expends his energies in the struggle for
life the more he needs domestic peace (even when his natural
tendencies run counter to domesticity). In matrimonial war-
fare Fritz Kreisler is a conscientious objector and a highly suc-
cessful husband. The most busy and successful men are often

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under the rule of their wives once they pass into the domestic
sphere. The hero of Strindberg’s drama "'The Father” is a
martinet before whom the serried ranks quail when he strides
towards them, but at home it is he who quails before his wife’s
stern eye. It is certainly based on sound psychological know-
ledge. It is the weaklings and nobodies of this world who work
off their frustrated will to power by playing the tyrant at home.
It is such men, too, who provide the main contingent of the
"stern fathers”.

Men, no less than women, are peculiar animals. Sexually
man is a mixture of love, obsession, inertia and compassion, to
which must be added his deep-seated hang to comfort and
peace. Even when his love and his obsession have disappeared,
the all-conquering inertia remains and is misnamed fidelity, or
the compassion, which is then misnamed goodness of heart. Or
there is still his sense of duty which proves sufficiently strong,
and this is then often placed rather hypocritically under the
heading of a virtue. This is perhaps why a man can best free
himself of an entanglement by getting married. The brutal
severance of a long-standing relationship is often possible only
if the female partner brings up sufficient courage and deter-
mination to do it. Brutality is really not a typical characteristic
of the male sex.

Such reflections arise in me as the result of a lifetime of
observation of married couples and their intimacies. Very
probably an element of masochism enters into it, too. Some
men are not averse to being maltreated. They rather like ex-
posing themselves as objects of pity and sympathy. Looked at
from this standpoint, the contradiction between Strindberg’s
animosity towards women and the fact that he nevertheless
married four times resolves itself quite simply. The great
pianist D’ Albert set up something of a record with nine wives.
Weingartner had five. And von Possart certainly established
a record by divorcing the same wife three times and marrying
her four times, leaving the institution of marriage one up and
no more to play.

Kreisler’s marriage in no way resembled the misfortunes of
so many of his colleagues. I have seen many happy marriages,
but rarely a happier. The lucky ones amongst the artists are
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blessed with a partner who is their very excellent complement.
No one dares to criticize an artist as ruthlessly as his wife dares,
and there is no one to whom he pays more attention. Richard
Strauss, for instance, never regards a work as quite finished and
satisfactory until his wife Pauline has approved. And at all the
concerts of the great German bass, Leo Slezak, his wife always
sat on an end seat by the centre gangway, and when he had
concluded an aria his first glance was towards her to sec how
he had done, and by a tried and trusted system of discreet sign
language she communicated her criticism. Only after that did
he pay any attention to his public. Kreisler, too, is a man who
attaches great importance to his wife’s verdict, and she is a
critic whose musical judgment is very reliable.

I am very fond of motor touring, and I like in particular to
go away with artists, and, above all, with the Kreislers. An
artist gives one a new angle on old things. I have often found
that seen through the eyes of an artist a familiar thing took on
entirely new aspects ; there were interesting details I had never
noticed before. The analysis of a thing often changes its com-
plexion, and even Jakob Burkhardt is seen to be far from the
last word on the Renaissance. I was, for instance, deeply im-
pressed by Kreisler’s analysis of Giotto’s squinting organist, and
our visits to Florence and Padua, to the Cimabues and the
towers of San Gimigniano, and the day we spent together in
that out-of-the way treasure-house Volterra, the focal point of
so many bygone cultures, are unforgettable memories for me.

A cherished memory, too, is Kreisler at the piano impro-
vizing. He is a great, artist and performer as a pianist as well
as a violinist. I have seldom heard the piano played more
beautifully. His playing was so delicate that it seemed some-
times as though a breeze was ruffling the keys — ^but sometimes
the breeze would swell rapidly into a storm. Kreisler at the
piano is so impressive that it seems a great pity that so few are
privileged to hear him.

The international concert artist is rather like a hunted
animal. He rushes from town to town and from country to
country, and his home is just where his luggage happens to be
parked. But for those rare periods of freedom from engagei^ents
Kreisler established himself in a house in Grunewald, a pleasant

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

suburb of Berlin. Every room in the place was furnished with
exquisite taste and with possessions of great artistry from all
parts — Kreisler has made no less than three tours of the world.
Every cherished piece had its history and association. As he is
childless, Kreisler arranged to leave the house and its contents
as a charitable foundation, and I was appointed one of the
trustees.

I quite understood and sympathized with his desire to save
the place from the beasdy claws of the Nazis, but his efforts
could not always be approved entirely, and the whole affair left
rather a bad taste. Kreisler’s friends and colleagues were dis-
mayed, and with some justification, at his frantic and un-
dignified efforts to be allowed to remain on in Germany after
Hitler came to power. Both Toscanini and Hubermann pub-
licly warned him, but for once some demon robbed him of his
highest possession, his keen sense of hearing. In the end he had
to go, and then he deeply regretted his vain efforts to come to
an arrangement with the devil. Before the Nazis came to power
he had agreed with the republican authorities to pay a settled
sum in taxation to make it possible for him to live in Germany
and not be crushed by the burden of double and treble taxation.
When the Nazis came they refused to recognize the arrange-
ment and charged him with fraudulent tax manipulations.
Under this perfidious charge they robbed him of everything
he possessed in Germany.

Bronislav Hubermann, as great an artist as Kreisler, but
politically far more astute, saw the threatening catastrophe in
Germany long before Kreisler did, and he turned his back on
the shameful place with deep contempt and loathing. He went
back to the land of his ancestors and continued his musical
career there, founding the magnificent Philharmonic Orchestra
of Palestine. Hubermann’s nature is outwardly a little abrupt
and uncompromising, but inwardly he is a mild and contem-
plative character. In appearance he is no darling of the con-
cert-hall. He is rather undersized, and his forehead is unusually
developed, so tliat it seems to make up a good half of his face.
His chin is prominent and his lips are rather thin, but it is a
powerful head, and when he plays, his eyes are restless (one has
the feeling that as a child he kept one eye on his violin and
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the other on his music) and his expression is impressive in its
determined concentration, reminiscent of the dcatli-mask of
Beethoven.

Hubermann was an infant prodigy, too. There is a well-
known picture of Johannes Brahms conducting his orchestra.
On the platform beside him is little Bronislav Hubermann, liis
violin tucked under his chin. It was as soloist in Brahm’s
famous violin concerto that Hubermann made his first appear-
ance before the public. He was a great violinist, and, he, too,
toured the world. He was one of the leading concert-hall
artists, and his brilliance was recognized, but he was not popu-
lar. He had a loyal following in this or that town, or this or
that country, but he never conquered the world as Kreisler and
others have done. His art lacked all intimacy ; it was as stem as
his character, and austerely classic. And although his art was
recognized and admired and his personality respected, he was
not loved.

Off the platform Hubermann is a bundle of nerves and
fancies. He lives in constant fear for his healtli and in positive
terror that something might happen to his hands. Unfortu-
nately his air accident in the Dutch East Indies before the war
made him worse and his nervous anxiety still greater. He can-
not walk up a flight of steps unless there is a banister on which
he can lean — or rather could lean if he wanted to, because in
fact he never does use the banisters, but they must be there. He
will not play, for instance, unless his notes are on a stand before
him, but, in fact, he never uses them — but they must be there.
Above all, he suffers from chronic insomnia. In hotels and in
private houses he is always anxious to find the quietest and
most out-of-the-way corner to retire to. He had a flat in a
house on the Luetzow Ufer in Berlin. He complained that the
family in the flat above him were noisy. Whether they really
were or not I don’t know, but in order to deaden the sound of
their movements he approached the father of the family and
offered him a generous sum for the purchase of thick carpets to
cover the whole floor space of their flat. The sum, of course,
was gladly accepted, and Hubermann had cause for satisfac-
tion, for the situation greatly improved. A little while after-
wards Hubermann met the man on the stairway of the house and

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

was overwhelmed with thanks and gratitude. It appeared that
Hubermann’s unexpected gift of money had been providential
in the family fortunes of his allegedly noisy neighbours.

‘‘Herr Hubermann/’ the man beamed, ‘"'I don’t know how
to thank you sufficiently. You saved me from bankruptcy and
ruin.”

‘‘How?” asked the puzzled violinist. “Didn’t you buy the
carpets, then?”

“No,” replied the good neighbour jovially, “carpet slippers.”

Those were the days when Hubermann could still laugh
heartily, and he did. I have not seem him for a long time, and
friends tell me that they no longer see him laugh. Apart from
the terrible disappointment he suffered in Germany, there was
a tragedy in his private life from which he never recovered. He
was deeply in love with a very beautiful woman. His love was
reciprocated, and the relationship meant everything to him and
to her. They were in Paris together, and she went ahead to
London to prepare things for his coming, and was immediately
struck down by an epidemic of influenza which was then ram-
pant. It developed at once into pneumonia, and she died
within a few days. Although Hubermann rushed to London as
soon as he learned that she was ill, she was dead when he
arrived.

Hubermann’s young colleague, Yehudi Menuhin, is now
twenty-seven years old. I first heard him in Berlin when he was
fourteen, and I have recorded the deeply moved comment of
Fritz Kreisler on his playing. There is little I can say about his
art ; it represents the acme of perfection, the culmination of a
long development of violin art and technique. “Poor lad !” said
Kreisler — his poverty looks very much like what the rest of us
regard as untold and unimagined wealth. The Gods have set
the sweat of his face between man and the attainment of the
beautiful, say the Greeks. In our Christian days it is often said
that God gives to those he loves in their sleep. The latter is the
easier way.

Yehudi Menuhin was born in New York, but he is only one
generation removed from Europe’s most thorough-going east,
the neighbourhood I have often referred to, a plague spot for
some, but a source of great intellectual and artistic wealth,
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where proletarian aristocrats of art and intellect dwell in the
half light until the time comes for them to go out into the
world and conquer their birthright. An over-curious and indis-
creet society lady once asked Menuhin’s father if he had any
idea where the lad got his talent from. The old man looked at
the lady quizzically and then declared, ‘Trom King David,
ma’am”.

CHAPTER XI

TOSCANINI, FURTWAENGLER, RICHARD
STRAUSS, BRUNO WALTER, FRITZ BUSCH

I FIRST MET Toscanini in Dresden. Fritz Busch had produced
"'Don Giovanni” in an entirely new mise en scene ^ and my friend
Max Slevogt had done the scenery. It was altogether a notable
performance, and both Busch and Slevogt gathered new laurels.
Toscanini had come specially to Dresden to be present at the
First Night, together with his daughter and her husband.
Count Castelbarco. After the performance we were all the
guests of Count Seebach, the intendant of the Dresden Opera
House, a grey-haired old gentleman of fine artistic perception.
The conversation concerned the performance almost to the
exclusion of everything else. It was analysed in all its com-
ponents: the music, the singing, the acting, the scenery, the
costumes, the production — ^nothing passed without close
examination and discussion. In the end there was general
agreement on the verdict : it was amostremarkableperformance.

However, on one point Toscanini and Busch had to agree
to differ for the time being. Busch had taken it upon himself
to alter one note at the conclusion of the second act. Toscanini
w^as not prepared to let this sacrilege pass. Mozart was Mozart,
and Fritz Busch should not have dared to make the change.
Busch defended himself. He declared that the note as it stood
in the printed score was obviously wrong. It must be a mistake
because as it stood it was out of keeping, not in Mozart’s style
at all. It jarred. In short, it was wrong. There must have been
a printer’s error. Toscanini was not satisfied, and the very next
day he went to Vienna, where his first step was to visit the

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Albertinum, where on examining the original MS.^ he dis-
covered that Fritz Busch was right. The reproduction had gone
out with a printer’s error. The alteration made by Fritz Busch
had, in fact, restored the reading of Mozart’s original.

It was a highly interesting clash. On the one hand Toscanini
with his enormous reverence for the very letter of Mozart’s
MS. (as he thought) and on the other the keen instinct of Fritz
Busch for the spirit of the music. Clearly, instinct was right (it
happened to be the instinct of a man who was himself a master),
but in a thousand and one other cases instinct might easily go
astray. It almost certainly would go astray in the case of lesser
musicians, and therefore the utmost care should be taken when
anomalies or apparent anomalies arise in the text. There is an
enormous difference between the attitude of a master of
tremendous conscientiousness like Toscanini, who prefers when
in doubt to stick to the MS., and the attitude of a man like
Wagner, himself a genius, who stuck to the MS; out of sheer
indolence. More than half a century ago the famous musical
historian Ambros (who despised Wagner) demonstrated that
as a conductor Wagner included in all his renderings of a
particular piece of Beethoven a hoary old printer’s error, and
that not from any reverence for Beethoven, but out of sheer
intellectual laziness,

I met Toscanini again in Salzburg. It was at this time that
he suffered his first attack of homarthritis. It was a severe
handicap for a man of his temperament who conducts not only
with his brain but with his whole body, who seems actually to
be physically compelling the orchestra to do his will. At
Salzburg he had to conduct with his arm ha^lf paralysed, and it
was not merely a question of conducting one finished per-
formance; the music of Verdi’s ‘Talstaff” had to be studied
afresh. His trouble was harmless enough, but very painful, and
the work proved extraordinarily arduous for him. However, he
surmounted his difficulties by sheer indomitable will, and the
performance was a triumph. Afterwards Reinhardt gave a
banquet for Toscanini. My wife was sitting next to the great
Italian, and, of course, the performance arose in the discussion.
My wife modestly confessed that although she loved music and
had a deep feeling for it, she had very little technical under-
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standing. Toscanini was delighted^ and clapped his hands in
his temperamental way, declaring that he was overjoyed to
meet an unprejudiced critic. He thought more of the courage
which admitted the limits of musical understanding than the
pretended knowledge of pseudo-intellectuals. And, of course,
he was right. A real feeling for music need not be based on
technical understanding, any more than the theatrical critic
need master the technical details of production.

One of my most valuable musical experiences was when
Stefan Zweig and I were invited by Toscanini to be present at
his rehearsals of a cycle of Beethoven symphonies he was to
conduct in London. It was concentrated spirit of Beethoven,
and we were privileged to watch the concentration being
achieved. Toscanini put a simply tremendous amount of
energy into the rehearsals. First he would conduct a passage
with explanations ; then he would conduct it again to the ac-
companiment of prayers and entreaties. If it did not go then
exactly as he wanted, his baton would fly off at a tangent, his
fingers would run through his hair in wild despair and his face
would then be buried in his hands whilst he recovered from his
disappointment. All was lost, and words failed him. Then he
would recover courage and start again. This time it would go
better. The musicians would follow him, doing their utmost to
please him. At last it would go with a swing, and a trans-
figured Toscanini would conduct as though in the seventh
heaven, singing the music as he conducted and occasionally
calling out instructions to various instruments.

There it was, the reward of tremendous effort, and the mighty
harmonies would thrill through the empty hall. It was
achieved; the seventy-year-old master had exerted his will
and triumphed again. Friends have told me that at home,
conducting the orchestra of the Milan Scala, he lets himself
go even at the performance itself, makes the most furious
grimaces and hurls audible rebukes into his orchestra. There
are not many conductors from whom the B.B.G. Symphony
Orchestra, of which each man is a soloist in his own line, would
stand what it willingly stands from Toscanini; but, there,
Toscanini is a master of his art, and they know it, and are even
grateful to him for his bullying.

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

It is always a matter of interest to me whether any hereditary
indications can be found to explain the presence of genius. I
asked Toscanini whether there were any such obvious indica-
tions in his case, and he told me that his father, a glass-blower
in Modena, had been very fond of music. On Sunday after-
noons and on other holidays he would sing with his children
in chorus. That w’as all the musical training Toscanini had as
a child. When he went out into the world it was as a musician
that he earned his living, and at the age of nineteen he found
himself a member of an orchestra with engagements in South
America. Owing to the sudden illness of their conductor in
Buenos Ayres, he was chosen to conduct. It was the first time
in his life. Whatever the public may have thought about it,
his orchestra was delighted. It was his first success, and it was
decisive for his future ; he could manage orchestras.

Fifty years later he was world famous, and English friends
were anxious to celebrate this fiftieth anniversary by a gala
concert in the Albert Hall, Now, the acoustics of the Albert
Hall are notoriously bad (though everything possible has been
done to improve them), and Toscanini refused absolutely to
conduct in the place, and nothing his pleading friends could
say succeeded in moving him. He was just as determined when
he decided to have no truck whatever with Mussolini. Both
these incidents (and many others) bear witness to a noble and
determined character.

Not ail great conductors are men of noble character. I am
thinking here of Furtwaengler, a man who failed to live up to
his own frequently expressed convictions, and let himself be
used, and his world prestige, exploited, in the interests of afoul
cause. It was not that he knew no better, or was in any doubt,
for he assured me on many occasions that he felt the same
contempt for the Nazis as we all did. His whole past, he
declared, vouched for his abhorrence of their baseness. To
ally himself with such scum would mean to betray his best
friends — for instance, Therese Simon, the owner of the Frank-
furter Z^itungy and her circle of music-loving Jews. The title of
State Councillor had been forced on him by the Nazis; he
conducted very rarely in Germtey; they had temporarily
deprived him of his passport; they had ascribed wireless broad-

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casts to him which he had never delivered — and so on and so on.
But that was as far as he got. He could mouth excuses for
himself one after the other, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t sum-
mon up sufficient civic and moral courage to break with this
new Germany of shame and disgrace. And the reason was that
he was afraid to face the possible rigours of exile. He was
afraid he would find himself without engagements abroad, and
he was not prepared to take the small risk involved. In reality
there was none. He is a great conductor, and in exile he would
have increased his reputation and, in addition, won the added
respect of all honest men. The man’s character was not strong
enough. He was my friend ; I liked him ; the thought that he
would damn himself with the civilized world left me no peace,
and I did everything possible to make him see where his plain
duty — and even his real interest — lay, and towards the end of
1937 I wrote him a long letter setting out the whole position and
imploring him to take the step which would place him with us,
where I thought he belonged, and against the Nazis. It was no
use.

With the best will in the world I can find no excuse for him.
He is a six-footer, the engaging son of a Professor, physically
upright, but spiritually withered. In his profession he is
energetic ; in civil life he is a weakling. As a musician he is a
master, a vigorous crescendo ; as a human being he is a miser-
able, feeble smorzando. The undisputed master of an orchestra,
he let himself be mastered by the Nazis. No excuse? ‘Well, as a
medical man I know he suffers from stomach trouble, and it is
a well-known fact that chronic stomach trouble has a deleterious
effect on the character. Farther than that I cannot go, and I feel
greatly disinclined to advocate sending all the Nazi aiders and
abettors to Karlsbad.

Bruno Walter is a very different character. The expression
on his face is gentle, almost childlike, and his mouth is friendly.
One almost feels that his appearance alone is a sure sign of how
well he conducts Haydn and Mozart. To-day he is the un-
disputed master of Mozart interpreters, and at the same time,
as the pupil of Gustav Mahler, he is more fitted than any other
to interpret the latter’s works, whilst the works of Hugo Wolff
take on an added loveliness when he conducts them.

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

It was Gustav Mahler whose persistence and determination
made the Vienna Opera House one of the great centres of world
operatic music. Something more than musical understanding
was necessary for that, and Gustav Mahler possessed it:
theatrical blood. The problem of the real significance of opera
is still the centre of great argument. Some declare that the
opera is drama with a musical background ; others insist that
it is music against a dramatic background. Toscanini favours
the second interpretation. For him the singer is a member of
the orchestra, and no more. Music sung has to take its place in
the framework of music as a whole, for all the world as though it
were a violin — or a bass-bombardon. And Toscanini therefore
treats his singers in the same orchestral way as he treats his
cellos or his triangle. And he changes them as he would change
instruments, as non-human objects. His short interjection at a
rehearsal, ‘‘Un altro tenore”, is an expression of this attitude.
Sometimes he demands performances of a singer — for him
an instrument like any other — ^which are more suited to a con-
structed instrument than to the human organism. I remember
once hearing the stretta in ^‘Troubador” taken by him presto
at a speed which exhausted both singer (the well-known tenor
Lauri Volpi) and audience (including me). '‘Just from
listening my ribs hurf’, said Nestroy on one occasion; it was
true of this. It was a new and extraordinary experience, and
one couldn’t help being carried away by it, but I believe Verdi
must have turned over and over in his grave — perhaps in time
to it. In any case, Toscanini sets up the principle : the opera is
music, pure music. Bruno Walter taies the other view. For him
the opera is theatre, the singers are actors, and the orchestra is
an accompanying factor subordinate to both action and singing.

There are the two opposing theses. In the last resort the
question is : can the opera stand up to the demands of our time,
or will it go under? Well, the opera has been with us now for
two hundred years and more, and it has not gone under yet ;
it has remained pure opera even when (under Wagner) it was
called a music drama. That is to say, it has remained an
impossible art form; impossible, you would say, and un-
natural, something monstrous in its essence. And yet it
continues to exist brilliantly, as though in justification of the
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Hegelian maxim that anything which exists has the right to
exist. To-day the objections to the operatic form are concen-
trated chiefly against ridiculous libretti. Weber’s libretti are
purgatives, and no investigator, no matter how painstaking, has
yet been able to discover exactly what does happen in “Trouba-
dour”, and, above all, why. Schikaneder’s “Magic Flute” is
sheer cretinism. But, on the other hand, “Traviata” (Dumas
Fils) and “Rigoletto” (Victor Hugo) are masterpieces of
musical drama. The libretto of the delightful “Figaro” is
based on Beaumarchais, whilst the libretto of “Don Juan”, with
its brilliant combination of tragedy, humour and moderate
goose-flesh, is surely a supreme example of dramatic operatic
art. The three or four acts of “Tales of Hoffmann” are a little
woolly and disconnected, but set to music the whole has a
compelling magic. And then “Fidelio” has a just acceptable
text. So what is going to become of opera? Exactly what has
already become of the opera despite the opera : “the inadequate
has nevertheless become an event” — it became so two hundred
years ago, and it has remained so ever since. There is little
reason to fear that an opera will ever cease to be an event.

I appreciate the opera as I would appreciate a row of good
pearls on a bad string. It is beautiful on the bosom of a beautiful
woman, and it gives pleasure round the neck of a dignified old
lady. If a libretto packed full of unintelligent and idiotic
anomalies and commonplaces can nevertheless inspire a great
musician to compose immortal music for it, then I am prepared
to ignore the string and feast my eyes on the pearls. But that,
I admit, is making the best of a bad job, and there is no reason
whatever why the experts should not do their best to diminish
the improbabilities of the genre, and to make the unbelievable
credible if they can (on the contrary, they must try). Some-
times they do it by drawing the attention away from the
idiocies and improbabilities, by making the whole more brilliant
in cunning combination with the attendant arts, by condensing
the text, by unobtrusively polishing up the duller parts, ^ by
clever adaptation — ^in short, by the art of theatrical production.
In this the great master was Gustav Mahler, and his most
brilliant apprentice, now become master in his own right,
was Bruno Walter, the contemporary master pioneer in the

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reform of the opera. What he has done in this respect in both
Berlin and Vienna remains exemplary.

After him as ingenious reformers of the opera come the two
friends and partners, Fritz Busch and Carl Ebert. They have
done wonders with Mozart and with the early Verdi’s ‘‘Mac-
beth” at Glyndebourne. It is heartening to observe the way
in which these two — Busch, the musician, and Ebert, the actor
from the Prussian State theatre — complement each other in
their work — a great contribution to the future of the opera.
It is along such lines that the opera must be revised against its
own traditions. On the dramatic stage such a revision was just
as necessary, and it was brought about by a handful of inter-
national playwrights and brilliant producers. The same, I am
convinced, will be done with the opera. The most daring, if
not the most successful, experiment was Milhaud’s “Columbus”
with the text of Claudel. Excess was the trouble here, and it is
typical of Bruno Walter’s well-balanced work that it knows
no excess. He counters the hoary old abuses of the operatic form
and seeks to develop it to perfection. And in this he is supreme.

In composing his “Rosenkavalier” Richard Strauss went so
far as to include the stage directions in the music — ^for instance,
through which door the servant was to make his entrance and
exit. The incident gave rise to much discussion. I don’t much
care for the custom of the analytical historian : the picking out
of “symptoms” and the setting up of cast-iron conclusions on
their basis concerning character, etc. Such conclusions are
non-proven ; they may be right — and they may just as well be
wrong. I have heard two interpretations of Strauss’s remark-
able This is more or less the high-brow explanation: “It
is clear with atomic certainty that the composer, subconsciously
overcome by musical hybris, forced the essential essence of the
opera from him by means of repression, withdrew his ego in
pathless deviation from the real object of the artistic form and
subjected his monomania abjectedly to a thing which in its
original idea carried validity only for the producer or scene-
shifter.” I have also heard it explained in a rather simpler
fashion by a Bavarian innocent who declared: “Well, God
help us, there you see was Strauss composing away for all he
was worth, and it was going fine, and he came to that bit and
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he didn’t want to stop^ so he said to himself, well, it\s all one
wash up, so let’s put the servant to music too, and then there
needn’t be any pause.” Personally, knowing Strauss as I do, I
favour the second interpretation.

The key to Strauss’s private character reads ''ostensible child
of nature” — ^with a very generous dose of calculated effect.
Part of this calculation is deliberate, and goes on, so to speak,
on the first floor and in the light of day, the rest of it is in the
cellar gloom. Strauss has been guilty of many acts of odious
characterlessness, though he professes to find them neither
odious nor characterless. He doesn’t want to believe it himself,
and he succeeds. He never regrets anything. A breach of
loyalty when the circumstances seem to call for it is so natural
to him that he is highly astounded at any suggestion that a
breach of loyalty can never be called for in a man of character.
His astonishment is half honest, and that is perhaps the worst
of it.

I have already mentioned that he was as thick as thieves
with the richest Jews in the country. When the circumstances
seemed to call for it he left them in the lurch remorselessly.
Money has always meant a lot to him — ^far too much. In other
days he married off his son to a daughter of Israel who was
loaded with it. His grandchild is thus half Jewish. He per-
sonally dedicated one of his operas to a Willi Levin, a \’ery
rich^ "ready-made” Jew, as Streicher was fond of calling the
Jews of the Montagu Burton type. Most of his collaborators
were Jews or half-Jews, like Hoffmannsthal, Stefan Zweig and
Alfred Kerr. And after all that, when the Nazis brutally dis-
missed Bruno Walter just before he was due to conduct a con-
cert of Strauss’s worfe, the noble Richard Strauss, instead of
showing solidarity with the humiliated conductor (not that
the Nazis really had the power to humiliate a great artist like
Bruno Walter), sprang into the breach — to save his concert by
conducting it Inmself ; though he is said to have done it without
taking the honorarium. Perhaps I was wrong in saying he
never regretted anything.

I was with him once at the Lido in Venice. It was the
inflation period, and, as everyone knows, the fact that half-a-
dollar was enough to pay for the royal entertainment of a dozen

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people attracted a public which could suddenly afford to be
purse-proud. Most of them there were an uncultured pack of
inferior snobs, and no one suffered more from their clumsy and
offensive behaviour than Americans of Elsa Maxwell’s type.
Richard Strauss was highly indignant at their behaviour, and
turning to me he declared savagely: ‘^This mob hasn’t as
many cultural monuments between New York and San
Francisco as we have between Augsburg and Munich — and
to-day it dominates Europe.” From that he went on to politics.
He deplored the fact that the Central Powers had lost the war,
bewailed the collapse of the Bavarian monarchy, expressed
the deepest sympathy with the dismissed royalties, and cursed
the German revolution up hill and down dale. The essential
failure of this very unrevolutionary revolution was that it did
not go far enough, that it hesitated at the very threshold of
its obvious tasks and perished of its own lack of consequence.
But for Richard Strauss it went too far.

I tried to explain to him that what had happened in Germany
was only a small part of the general process of change which
was going on in the world as a whole and affecting both
political and unpolitical spheres; that analogies could be
found on the artistic field: in painting the Barbizon school;
in science the epoch-making advances of Pasteur and Mendel-
jeff; in sculpture Rodin; in engineering technique Diesel,
and so on. And I added that the process was going on just as
much in music: there was a man, for instance, who had
invested programmatic music with new harmonies, a musical
socialist, even a bolshevist revolutionary, and his name was
Richard Strauss. He listened thoughtfully to what I had to
say, and seemed even a little embarrassed, and finally he pulled
himself together: ‘‘You know, Herr Professor, you may be
right. I have been a bit daring and I got rid of a lot of old junk.
But I still stand on the shoulders of Beethoven and Wagner.
Call me a revolutionary if you like, but not a Bolshevist.
The Bolshevist is Stravinsky.”

In defence of himself perhaps he was right. He was less a
revolutionary beginning than the end of the Wagner and Liszt
period, whereas Stravinsky is a deliberate, systematic and
determined, even professional, revolutionary in music. Inci-
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dentally, Strauss himself had expressed deep admiration of
Stravinsky’s “Petruschka”. So much for Strauss. It is un-
necessary to say that his character does not reflect on the
greatness of his musical performance. It is unfortunate that high
moral standard^ are so often independent of great ability — or
rather the other way round. However, it is not always so ; there
are shining examples of the two in one, but not Richard Strauss.

Whilst we are on the subject of conductors, let me introduce
another one, although he didn’t last very long. Whilst I was
serving my time as a young student of medicine in the Austro-
Hungarian Army we all marched off to Pilisesaba near Buda-
pest for the summer manoeuvres. We were brigaded with the
Bosnian-Herzegovinian Regiment. My regimental doctor was
the ranking chief, and he was responsible for the medical
service in the camp. However, he did not take manoeuvres very
seriously, and there were so many things he did for preference
that although I was only in my sixth term, he left the regular
visiting and the treatment of minor cases in my hands. Our
chief amusement was provided by the regimental band of the
Bosnians, which was the most famous of all the military bands
of the monarchy, and rightly too ; its conductor was a young
bandmaster named Franz Le^r. The revenue from the band,
and it was a large one, went to the officers’ mess. Needless to
say the band was treated like the rare jewel it was. The bands-
men were hardly more than courtesy soldiers, and except for
formal occasions the band was divided up into poups and
hired out to various restaurants and cafes, from which practice
much grist came to the mill.. Lehar would tour the various
restaurants and cafes, conduct a piece or two in each, receive
his applause and then go on.

One day two of these highly prized bandsmen reported sick
to me, I examined them and suffered a terrible shock. They
both had diphtheria. I called in my regimental doctor and
we discussed the matter anxiously. If the infection became
known it irieant quarantine for the whole band, and that would
have meant a grave pecuniary loss. In the end we decided that
the best thing to do would be to record two cases of inflam-
mation of the throat and hope for the best. We isolated them
and treated them as best we could. There was no “diphtheria

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serum"’ in those benighted days and the treatment was entirely
'‘symptomatic”. I was in charge of them, and I can assure you
that no two musicians ever had such care and attention. To
ensure complete isolation I was given special guards, enough
men to have manned a small fortress. In the end the two
recovered, and there were no further cases of infection. And
all the time the regimental band played on cheerfully.

Lehar knew, of course; we had had to take him into our
confidence. When it was all over he was anxious to show his
gratitude in some way and he asked me whether there was
anything he could do for me. I acquainted him with a wish I
had long secretly cherished : would he let me conduct the band
once? Why, certainly he would, and arrangements were made
for me to conduct the Semiramides overture of Rossini the
following Sunday morning before the whole camp on parade.
When the great moment came I was in a terrible state, a
compound of great pride, dour determination and funk. I
won’t say I don’t know how I got through, because I do now,
though I didn’t at the time. I am sure all the musicians were
very sorry for me and did their best. I was much annoyed with
the big drummer, "The Backside Conductor”, as he is dubbed,
who walloped his instrument mercilessly and far too loud.
Afterwards I discovered that the noble fellow was beating time
to prevent the whole performance from falling to pieces. I
know what Napoleon felt after Waterloo. I had no idea an
overture could take so long. When the fiasco was at last at an
end I put down the baton with relief. I was physically ex-
hausted. Up to then I had been quite undecided which career
to pursue : music or medicine. My decision was made for me,
and since then I have never wavered.

CHAPTER XII

SINGERS AND THEIR ART

Singing is a means by which a human being can express the
state of his feelings. The psychical condition "tunes” the
instrument. Musical analogies often serve to describe a state of

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mind or a condition of the spirits: a man is “tuned up", or
“toned down”, or “out of tune” with the world. A man is said
to have a “harmonious” nature. Life is said, in its more depress-
ing moments, to be “full of disharmonies”. A man's feelings can
often be discovered from the tone of his voice, from its high or
low pitch. And conversely, it is a fact well known to practical
psychologists that a man can deliberately alter his mood by
altering the tone of his voice, though it requires quite an
expenditure of energy to do so. For instance, real physical effort
is necessary to raise the pitch of the voice by as little as the third
of a tone in opposition to a prevailing mood. And again, nothing
is more calculated to soothe hypomaniacs than to talk to them
in low and quiet tones, and thus persuade them by a psycho-
physical reaction to lower their own tone. No prayer, no
matter how deeply devotional, can express the spirit of a burial
more adequately than Chopin's funeral march with its
preliminary deep and solemn passages which stress the sad loss
of a beloved person, and then its higher-pitched and consoling
passages with their soothing idea that the dead person has now
found peace.

In short, the voice is an integral function of man's physical
and psychical condition. I don’t suppose there is anyone left
to-day who would anatomically confine the voice to the larynx.
The larynx is like the strings of a violin which sound only when
they are vibrated on a sounding-board. But although this
physical phenomenon is quite simple and can be adequately
analysed, it is still quite impossible to explain the fine nuances
on which the tonal quality depends. For instance, no one has
succeeded in explaining satisfactorily just what it is, or what
combination it is, which makes up the fine tone of one violin as
distinct from anotter. The exact proportions, the size, the
material used in the making, the varnish, and so on — every-
thing has been examined, but the solution still evades the
investigators. The hope of finding an analogical explanation in
the case of the human voice is probably still remoter.

What we do know is that physically three main factors are at
work to produce the phenomenon of the human voice: the
lungs, the larynx and the tone-modulating apparatus. When
the lungs send the air uniformly through the larynx, then the

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tone will be high or low, according to the tension placed on the
vocal chords. The tone is formed by the sounding-board of the
chest, the auxiliary cavities and the modulating influence of the
mouth, etc. Where these three composite parts are uniformly
developed, then the resultant sound will be agreeable and
possess artistic qualities. Added to this there is the factor of pure
musical feeling, which gives the tone its expression. How
seldom nature gives all these attributes in full measure to any
one individual can be judged by the fact that there are hardly
ever even two great singers of equal reputation living at the
same time. And even then both a Caruso and a Ghaliapine will
each be called ‘‘unique’’. Since their day no new star of equal
quality has risen. We have been waiting forty years for a new
Patti.

The basic qualities of a voice are born, and teaching and
training can never be anything but auxiliary aids; they can
never replace or make up for an inborn lack. The teaching of
singing and the training of singers give rise to much dispute.
Every teacher of singing has his own pet ideas, and ver}' often
he rides them to death — and destruction, ignoring the inborn
qualities of the pupil and ruthlessly imposing a regime which has
perhaps proved advantageous for some famous singer with
very likely quite different constitutional material. I have
known many teachers of singing personally, and have heard
about many others through their pupils. They all lived on their
own former reputation as singers and on the reputation of such
of their pupils who had proved successful — that is to say,
generally of pupils with constitutional material similar to their
own, who were therefore able to derive benefit from their
particular methods. With pupils of a different constitutional
make-up such rule-of-thumb methods can prove disastrous, but
then the failure is not ascribed to the unsuitable methods, but to
the alleged inability of the pupil, and nothing more is heard
about the matter. On the other hand, when a pupil meets with
success — or fame! — he is paraded around as having been
“made”, “brought out”, or whatever the favourite expression
may be, by the teacher.

In my experience no artists are more credulous, even gullible,
than singers. The devotion, loyalty, love, gratitude and
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confidence of a successful singer towards his teacher have to be
seen to be believed. It is quite moving — and quite foolish. A
high-pitched_ vocal _ register is often said to be intimately
associated with the intellectual condition we rail stupidity and
to befall colorature singers and tenors in particular. The friends
of the famous singer Joseph Schwarz were accustomed to
declare that although he was a deep baritone, he was as stupid
as a high tenor. But to return to my point, for a teacher of
singing to apply the same methods to all his pupils is sheer folly,
but that does not prevent its being done more often than not’
and often with tragic results for the unfortunate pupil whose
constitutional make-up is not susceptible to such methods. The
wretched pupil begins to doubt himself in despair instead of
recognizing his teacher for what he is, a man of neither sense
nor understanding. Teachers of singing are generally either
too lazy to check, re-check and revise their methods or, and
that is usually the case, too dull to understand the absolute
necessity of individual adaptation. Most of them concentrate
on a so-called “breathing technique”, and usually insist on
something they describe as a point d'appui, on which the
regular and uniform expulsion of the breath is supposed to be
based. Some of them swear by the fixation of the diaphragm,
others will have nothing but rib breathing, a third contingent
insist on stomachic muscular breathing, a fourth lot have
discovered that the rump muscles are really the queen of the air,
and so on and so on, including those who make everything
dependent on the relaxation of the bodily stance and the
thorax, those who pay chief attention to the innervation of the
vocal chords and the movements of the mouth. And finally
there are those who go all out to “breathe soul” into their
pupils. Very few of them seem to have the faintest idea that
even the simplest muscular movement is the result of a complex
co-ordinative function, whereby all that is seen is the practical
intention of the co-ordinated or reflex effort. The great
majority of them seem to imagine that the human organism is
made up of simple individual functions instead of complex co-
ordinative functions.

To give an example of what I mean, when a human being
sighs or yawns, such an improbable part of the body as the anus

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is drawn into the process, for the anal sphincter is contracted
and the whole rectum is convulsively drawn up, and that is not
all, for other muscles are brought into operation as well. I
knew a successful teacher of singing, the tenor and medical man
Nadolovitch, who secured a regular change of register, and
particularly high tones, simply by variable innervations of the
buttock and the abdominal muscles. And there are, in fact,
various schools which found their systems on some such
concomitant movements. To define training in the wider
sense I should say that no matter what the physical movement
to be carried out, the process is not the learning of the movement
itself — ^you cannot '’'learn’’ to use a muscle — but the exclusion of
all inhibiting accompanying functions. In other words, the true
aim of training is to obtain a relaxation of all the muscles not
necessary to the movement, whatever it may be. The energy
saved in this way then benefits those fewer muscles whose true
task it is to carry out the function, and it is of no significance
whatever whether the end result aimed at is riding, discus-
throwing, piano-playing, singing or what will you. The fewer
muscles brought into play apart from the absolutely necessary
ones for the performance of any movement of any kind the less
will be the exertion required, the less exhaustion will result and
the more accomplished will be the performance.

To return to the artist, whether singer or player, nothing
affects an audience more surely than strain. The corporative
larynx of an unfortunate audience suffering the ululations of a
throaty tenor will instinctively contract in sympathy — though
that is perhaps the last word to express their feelings. But
when an accomplished performer is at work the result is a
pleasurable feeling of relaxation. This psycho-physical re-
action is quite definite and can easily be registered. I have
experimented on my naive and simple serving personnel by
registering their breathing on a kymographion when listening
to the laboured performance of an inferior violinist and when
listening to the performance of a violinist of world reputation.
The breathing is tense and erratic when listening to the bungler,
and relaxedi and regular when listening to the artist. This is an
experiment which could be used as an objective criterion of any
artistic performance, and I am convinced that it would justify
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itself brilliantly whenever the highly trained artist faced the
under-trained incompetent. For my own part, I never felt
more relaxed and peaceful than when listening to Caruso. To
achieve the desired effect, therefore, teachers of singing and
trainers of singers should aim at excluding all inhibiting
innervations, at developing the protagonist at the expense of the
antagonist, and thereby securing that equilibrium between
these two opposing forces which spells the accomplished
performance.

The successive co-ordination of muscular movement is the
second task on which training should concentrate if it is to be
effective. The fact that teachers of singing make little if any
difference between their methods of teaching men and women
is in itself suspicious. The two sexes have two quite distinct
ways of breathing. With women the part played by the thorax
is the dominant feature of breathing, rather than that of the
diaphragm ; with men it is more the diaphragm, and therefore
more stomachic breathing. Another thing which must appear
strange in the usual methods of teaching is the tendency to treat
all races and nationalities as though they were one. There is
the Vienna school, the French school, the Italian school, and
so on, but the methods of any of these schools are applied with-
out distinction to pupils of whatever nationality. Nationals of
one kind are recognizable as foreigners when they speak the
idiom of another nationality because their own constitutional
make-up has had a great deal to do with the moulding of their
own language and prevents their speaking the other perfectly.
A foreigner only very rarely succeeds in learning a language
other than his own and speaking it without recognizable accent.
For this reason it is quite impossible to use any particular
method of teaching singing indiscriminately for all nationalities.
A man talks according to the way his jib is cut — and that is the
way he sings, too.

These are lesser differences, determined by environment, but
nevertheless they all help to influence the final result, and
attention to them can make just that difference between the
good and the better in functional performance. The mouth, the
great variety of skull formations with the resonant auxiliary-
cavities, the tongue, the muscles — they all play their role in the

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final moulding of the voice which issues from them. The actual
vocal chords are probably the least important factors. Of
course, a violin cannot be played without its strings, but every
expert knows how unimportant they are in the production of
tone compared with the soimd-box of the violin, the fingers of
the artist and the stroke of his bow.

D’Andrade, one of the finest baritones it has ever been my
good fortune to hear, had a larynx which was badly twisted to
one side, and his vocal chords were chronically thickened with
catarrhal slime. I always treated him with the greatest care, for
fear that this chronic catarrh might cause his glorious voice to
deteriorate in tone, but it didn’t seem to. Richard Tauber, on
the other hand, has no unusual features about his larynx, and
there is hardly any difference to be noted between his and that
of any perfectly normal healthy man. However, Tauber has a
palate and a tongue which react instantaneously to the finest
fibrillary impulses. I have never seen anything more impressive
of its kind. Nature has given this marvellous singer everything
necessary for the highest performance.

In conclusion, let it not be thought that in my criticism of
teaching methods I dispute the necessity of training even the
most striking natural gifts. Far from it, but it certainly is a
question of how. But if that how is successfully dealt with, then
teaching and training can develop even lesser-gifted singers to
give a quite respectable performance. Even diamonds must be
cut and polished.

CHAPTER XIII

THE VYALZEVA

Russia was still Czarist Russia when I was called to Peters-
burg to the bedside of the Vyalzeva. Her name was a household
word in Russia, more even perhaps as a living symbol of the
mysterious vitality of her own people than as a singer. When I
first saw her, her own vitality was fast approaching its end. She
was in the last stages of pernicious anaemia.

At the height of her powers the^Vyalzeva was the uncrowned
Czarina of her country, an ash-blond beauty of irresistible charm
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and attraction. Unfortunately I saw her only when she was very
ill, but even then her large blue eyes were astonishingly beauti-
ful. Her features were finely chiselled, her cheekbones high and
Slavonic, her nose pure Greek, and when she smiled wanly in
welcome I could see that her teeth were magnificent,

I had just finished and published my studies on radio-active
elements, and in particular Thorium X, and their effect on the
blood-forming organs, when I was called to Vyalzeva. It was
January — not a time to choose to go to Russia — and I travelled
with the North Express to Petersburg. It was seven o’clock in
the morning when the train drew in, and it was pitch dark. I
was met with a troika and driven out to where the singer had
her house. Arriving, I was led down a long corridor and into a
very large room lit by one oil lamp. A man who had been
waiting for me rose from an oriental divan. He was a Russian
officer of enormous stature with a completely bald head which
glowed in the soft light. His stern face and black moustache
gave him the appearance of a Tartar. He was the friend and
lover of Vyalzeva, and he took me to her bedside at once.

One glance was enough. The end was very near. However,
she was quite conscious and able to talk. Suffering ennobles
the features of some women, and so it was with the Vyalzeva.
Her expression was almost transcendental in its calm beauty. I
was reminded of the sinking sun on a quiet summer’s evening.
The beauty of my patient, my own youthful impressionability,
the strange quality of the atmosphere and the subdued lighting,
all combined to impress the scene on my mind indelibly, and I
'stood there as a young and not very experienced doctor over-
awed by the atmosphere and faced with a hopeless case and
fully conscious of my own inability to help. I did my best to give
them both courage. The Vyalzeva smiled ; she did not need it.

The next day the death agony began. I said what it was
desirable to say in such circumstances. I told the Colonel that
she was dying and that nothing could be done to save her, and
that in the circumstances it would be more humane to let
nature take its course and not to attempt to prolong a hopeless
struggle. But he would have none of it, and demanded
categorically that I should do my utmost to maintain her life to
the very last possible minute. Nothing remained for me but to

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

perform this really inhuman task, so I promised to do what I
could. He was overcome with emotion, knelt beside the bed and
took her hand, pressing it to his lips. He remained in that
position for twelve hours until the soul had left her body.

At that time Petersburg had the biggest and finest chemists
in the world. It was a four-storeyed house and packed with
everything the science of medicine required, including both
medicine and apparatus. I prescribed everything that could
possibly be of assistance, and servants ran backwards and for-
wards with bottles and packages. Oxygen apparatus was a
rare thing in those days, but one was secured and brought into
use. I fought that day as I have rarely had to fight. As soon as
one medicine failed to produce a response from the sinking
organism, stronger methods had to be tried. Everything
possible was done, and everything depended on the tw^o
finger-tips that controlled the failing pulse. Death was delayed
for twelve hours, and at the end of that time I broke dow'n
myself and wept, the relaxation of tension was so violent. That
has happened to me only on one other occasion in my life : when
I had to bring a paralytic from the country into an asylum and
the only way to keep him calm was to sing the habanera from
^‘Carmen’’. It caused me to hate a beautiful opera I had
previously loved.

During the death struggle the news had spread in Petersburg,
and soon we were flooded with visitors : delegates from the
innumerable charitable organizations with which the dying
woman had been connected, officers of the garrison, and people
of all social classes filed through the sick room and the holy
candles flickered as the door was opened and closed. The
mother knelt before an ikon at a little altar in the room and
prayed uninterruptedly. All the ceremonies of the Orthodox
Church for the dying were performed before this house altar.
Many visitors brought holy articles, relics, ikons and so on from
which they hoped miracles. The Guards officers brought ikons
framed in gold and set with precious stones. These various items
were shoved one after the other under the pillows of the sick
woman, and I had all I could do to prevent her from being
disturbed and to remove the things tactfully at first opportunity.

The funeral procession was one of the most magnificent ever
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held in Gzarist Russia, a country of imposing funerals. Two
regiments of cavalry had to be called out to keep the crowds in
order, in addition to great numbers of police. The Court and
the ofl&cers corps were strongly represented, though unofficially,
because the relation of the Czarist Colonel with the beloved
singer had been without benefit of clergy. The mourning was so
widespread and so obviously sincere that the dead woman’s
popularity must have been enormous. I did not know a great
deal about her beyond the fact that she was a great Russian
singer. It appeared that she had been a servant girl in a Russian
high school for girls. One day a well-known Russian lawyer
was visiting his daughter at the school, and whilst waiting in
the reception room he heard the girl Vyaizeva singing as she
went about her work. He was so struck with her voice that he
made arrangements for her to leave her place and be trained as
a singer. When her training was complete she had ambitions to
be an opera singer, and thanks to his influential connections he
succeeded in securing the role of Carmen for her at the Peters-
burg Opera House.

The performance was a fiasco. The lawyer stuck to his guns,
however, and Vyaizeva had not lost confidence in herself.
However, as it was impossible to secure another public engage-
ment, it was arranged that she should sing at a charity concert.
The audiences at charity concerts are patient and long-
suffering, and no doubt it was in this Christian mood that they
sat back and prepared to let the Vyaizeva, or plain Vyaizeva as
she was then, perform. Fortunately Vyaizeva was a woman of
high intelligence ; she had abandoned her operatic pretensions
and she contented herself with the rendering of Russian gypsy
songs. The audience was galvanized by her performance, and
her song, ‘‘Gayda Troika”, became famous at once and swept
over the whole country. She went from success to success, and
before long she was famous. Millions heard her and millions
wanted to hear her again and again. She was feted and
worshipped, and the effect she produced on audiences was
something like ecstacy. The great love of the Russians for
female beauty and for their own folk songs combined to carry
the Vyaizeva to triumph after triumph, until she was beyond all
dispute the first singer in the land.

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

The human voice is an erotic instrument. In the world of
nature sound, song is a sexual call. The male nightingale
pours his heart out in colorature warbling only until he has
attracted and captured his mate, and after that his song is
silenced. He does not sing for the sheer love of producing
beautiful sounds, and as soon as his sexual requirements are
satisfied he stops. In this case it was the female of the species
that sang, and that for pure love of her art, but nevertheless the
effect was erotic. With the Vyalzeva the effect was not
intentional. With some singers it certainly is, and with many
the deep source of their song is their own sexuality. There need
be nothing surprising or repugnant about this fact. The
human voice and human sexuality are essentially paired. With
the approach of puberty the voice changes. With the operative
removal of the testicles the voice changes again. Gan the close
connection between the human voice and sexuality be doubted?
A beautiful voice can work like an aphrodisiacum — for those to
w^hom it appeals. The tenors, and once again that is beyond
dispute, achieve their greatest effect on the opposite sex; in
men they often produce feelings of hostility, another interesting
phenomenon. In my experience I have hardly met a colorature
singer who was not strongly sexed to an obvious degree. Only
as long as the artist himself remains sexually vital does his voice
remain at its peak. With the decline of the sexual secretions the
voice loses its brilliance of quality. Another undeniable fact for
practical psychologists is that, on the other hand, sexual desire
can be strengthened by singing.

I am quite sure that the unexampled triumphs of the
Vyalzeva were due largely to the sexual appeal of her voice.
Unfortunately I have heard her sing only via the gramophone,
but, even so, enough has been captured to confirm me in my
judgment. The voice was one of slight nasality with velvet-like
modulations of tone of an altogether enchanting quality. And
what must the living voice emanating from the beautiful woman
have been like in its effect if so much can still be perceptible
after it has been artificially preserved — or ‘'canned'*, as
Einstein would say? The memory of her triumphs is the only
indication we still have. Small wonder that the entrance prices
to hear Vyalzeva were unprecedented. When she died she
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left thirty million roubles, at a time when the rouble was still a
rouble and not one poor unit in an astronomical calculation.
And although no spendthrift, she lived a luxurious life and gave
away large sums to charities ; whole orphanages relied on her
support for their existence. When she travelled it was always
in her own special train. A rich grain merchant of Odessa is
said to have made her out a cheque for three million roubles for
an encore of his favourite song. And on another occasion a
would-be listener was heard explaining at the box-office after
having been told the fabulous entry prices that he only wanted
to hear her sing — nothing else.

During the Russo-Japanese War she turned her private train
into a hospital train and went to the front as a nurse. It was
here that she met the man she fell in love with and who
remained her lover to the last : the huge colonel who knelt at her
side for the last twelve hours of her life — and made her death
more difficult by his love.

My whole experience in Petersburg was almost more artistic
than medical. Not merely because my patient had been a great
artist, but because all the extraordinary circumstances of the
experience were deeply artistic: the environment, the deep
mourning, the strangeness of a totally new and different
civilization. It was difficult for me to believe that my own
sensations were real. Russian reality seemed more like an
artistic creation, like a dramatic film with a star. When later on
I first saw the Stanislavsky theatre, this eastern dream world
was brought back to my mind. There the reality had seemed
like art ; here the art seemed to have become reality.

CHAPTER XIV

ORLIK, SLEVOGT, LIEBERMANN AND
KOKOSCHKA

Unfortunately I have had little opportunity of getting to
know any of the great French impressionists, but I was certainly
in close touch with their German colleagues, and intimately
acquainted with the leading German impressionists. Max

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Liebermann, Max Slevogt, Emil Orlik and Oskar Kokoschka. I
possess valuable original pictures and drawings of all four of
them, given to me as a mark of friendship.

A lesser-known member of our circle was Josef Gruenberg, to
whom I have already referred in these pages. Graphic art was
his hobby, and he devoted the greater number of his leisure
hours to it. He was an artist of great technical capacity, with a
wide knowledge of the graphic arts and their technique. He was
Russian by birth and he sympathized with the revolutionary
regime. For this he was known amongst his friends by the
nickname of ^'Bolshie”. He had a collection of examples of the
graphic art, which, whilst being neither particularly extensive
nor particularly valuable as market values went at the time, was
of the highest technical interest, perhaps even unique, from the
experimental point of view, in that it contained not only
examples of the art, but also of technical reproduction, and it
was this angle which claimed his chief attention.

As everyone interested in the subject knows, the more re-
productions which are made from the same plate the less
satisfactory each successive reproduction becomes owing to the
damage done to the plate in the process of printing. After a
couple of dozen prints have been pulled the plate is practically
worthless. The great variations in the prices of early and later
reproductions of one and the same Rembrandt print, for
example, are an illustration of this regrettable fact. The
damage done to the plate is sad enough even in the hands of a
pious expert with a feeling for the work of art he is reproducing,
but when an irresponsible bungler gets on the job it is heart-
rending. The application of the ink alone requires care, and
then comes the necessarily powerful pressure of the roller, which
gradually blunts the fine ridges raised by the burin or whatever
tool has been used.

Bolshie’s idea was to construct a press which would not only
spare the plate the great wear and tear of the current methods of
reproduction, but which would produce better results at the
start and go on doing so. He worked with industry, enthusiasm
and knowledge on this idea, and the result was his patent
“Hydropress”. I don’t want to go into the technical details, but
the main idea was that the plate and paper were placed between
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two mbber surfaces and exposed to a uniform pressure of
Up to 300 atmospheres. In addition, the roller principle was
abandoned and the pressure was uniform, being exerted
vertically through plate and paper over the whole surface. In
consequence of this method, far less damage — infinitesimal
damage, in fact — was done to the ridges on the plate, with the
result that there was practically no difference between the first
pull and the thousandth ; each detail was as clear and the whole
as bright as the first.

There was another great advantage in this method: the
uniform pressure made it possible to use all sorts of other
materials for etchings apart from copper, steel and wood.
Glass, clay, photographic plates, etc., could be used with much
better effect than formerly. This is a most important point for
the future of the art of etching, because each material holds its
own special inspiration for the artist. Leonardo da Vinci was
not far wrong when he declared that every surface already
contained the picture to be produced on it.

A whole series of experiments were made in long and fruit-
ful evenings. Slevogt, Orlik and Pankok worked on various
materials : etchings were made on glass with fluorine acid, and
on porcelain with diamonds. They were cut into wood and
stippled on steel. The result was printed in every possible
colour on every possible material: paper, leather, silk, linen,
etc. The story of these experiments together with innumerable
illustrations were ready for print, and the book was to be
published by the Bruno Cassirer Verlag, but unfortunately the
Thousand Years Reich dawned and upset the plans, as it
upset so many other valuable things. However, all the material
is in my hands, and one day it will be published.

Emil Orlik was born in Prague, but he lived most of his life in
Berlin. Czechoslovakia has every right to be proud of him, and
he spoke German with a pronounced Czech accent all his life.
Many fine examples of his work are now carefully cherished in
the leading print collections of Europe and America. He was at
his most brilliant perhaps in rapidly drawn sketches, and the
best were published in two volumes entitled ‘'95 Heads* \ His
work did much to popularize the graphic art in Germany, but
it did not satisfy him completely, and, in fact, his favourite

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

medium was painting. He was a master of all techniques, and
he worked brilliantly in gouache, aquarell and oils; tried his
hand at frescoes, and did copper and steel engravings for the
Mint, and woodcuts in the Japanese style. He went to Japan,
and he was one of the first to recognize the artistic value of
Japanese woodcuts. He was an artist of manifold interests and
an ability in all of them which amounted to virtuosity, though,
truth to tell, he never reached really classical heights.

Max Slevogt, on the other hand, stood supreme amongst
German graphic artists, and, in my opinion, and in the opinion
of many critics better able to judge than I am, he was one of the
leading graphic artists of our day. As far as I know, there is still
not a single example of his work, either his engraving or his
painting, in any of the official English collections. That is a
regrettable omission, Slevogt was a robust, thick-set son of the
County Palatine, with a heavy mane of hair and a square
beard. He always made me think of a tame lion. A powerful
and muscular man, to look at him you would have thought his
line of country was weight-lifting, and nothing in his appearance
suggested the delicate and aiiy quality of his art with its fairy-
like figures. Formally he was the descendant of Tintoretto and
Delacroix. His colouring was reminiscent of the Italian, whilst
his joyful representation of nature derived from the Frenchman.
English artists and collectors know his name at least, but the
time will come when they and collectors in other countries will
snap up examples of his work as they were snapped up in
Germany. He had a romantic fantasy, and its technical
expression caused him no difficulties. He gave the idea form and
filled it with force and inspiration, and everything that he
created lived. Both the ideas and the actions of productive men,
and this is particularly true of the creative artist, have a lasting
moral and spiritual effect on the rest of mankind only when
they come from a pure heart. Griesinger, one of the greatest
brain anatomists of all times, declared, ‘‘Great ideas come from
the heart’ ^ and this expresses what I mean and gives us the key
to Slevogt’s success. What he thought, and what he drew and
painted, his fantasy disciplined by his art, and his art enriched
by his fantasy, all came from his absolute innocence of heart.
Slevogt was truly one of the pure in spirit. He never had
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arriere pensees I he never had '‘designs”. He was not suspicious or
mistrustful^ and if he was ever hurt, it was because he had been
compelled to observe that someone else, whether artist or not,
was not so forthright as himself That he even noticed such a
thing was unusual, for his attitude to men and things was
child-like in its simplicity. Conventional values were nothing to
him; he didn’t even see them. The thing that mattered for
him — the only thing he saw — was the lasting historic or artistic
value of a thing.

Details were unimportant for him. Complex thinking and
action came to him naturally, and that, it seems to me, is the
essence of artistic intuition. He had little understanding for
minor, everyday matters, but his judgment in important things
w^as extraordinarily sound. I have said that details were un-
important for him, but I should have said unimportant details.
A detail that affected the whole could take on great importance,
even when it might seem to other people to be trivial. For
instance, he once wrote an urgent letter to me from Ludwigs-
hafen, where he was engaged on his last great work. He wanted
to know from me, as an expert in anatomical matters, where the
spear- thrust of Longinus must have pierced Christ on the cross.
Early pictures of the crucifixion show no such w^ound, and in
later pictures the mark of the spear is showm in various places.
Slevogt had begun to suspect that the legend of Longinus,
whose spear is said to have given Christ the coup ie grace, was of
later origin. Obviously if the resurrection was to be acceptable
as a historic fact, then there must be no doubt w^hatever of the
death of the crucified one in the first place. The Church
urgently needed this absolute certainty. Hence the apocryphal
spear w^ound of Longinus. In this connection it is interesting to
note that neither the Gospel of Matthew nor Mark make any
reference to this spear thrust, whilst John, written over a
century later, introduces it. In view of the lack of any con-
temporary confirmation and of the lack of any such wound in
the earliest representations, Slevogt’s doubt seemed well
founded. In any case, I was able to tell him definitely that the
mark of the wound could certainly not be where most artists
had put it. Unless Longinus pierced the heart simply from the
left, he would have had to drive the thrust from the right so

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deep below the ribs in order to reach the heart that the skin
entrance could not have been identical in position with the
inner channel of the wound, and, in addition, with the sinking
of the dead body depending from the cross the stab mark must
necessarily have been lost to view in the skin wrinkles inevitably
produced by the slumping of the body. Such a wound from the
front could therefore be no more than a mere indication.
Incidentally, my view in this matter was shared by Giovanni di
Pisa, both father and son, as can be seen in their two wood
carvings of the Saviour hanging on the cross, the one in Pisa,
the other in Pistoia, both dating from the twelfth century. In
the end Slevogt decided not to paint the alleged coup de grace
wound at all. That is an indication of what I mean by an
important detail for Slevogt.

In ordinar}^ matters Slevogt was good-natured and very easy
to influence, but where his art was concerned he could be as
immovable as a rock, almost obstinate,^ and unwilling to make
even the least concession. But this must not be taken to mean
that he was averse to criticism or that he refused to listen to it.
On the contrary, far from being annoyed when a mistake was
pointed out, he was very grateful for the opportunity of correct-
ing it. But when criticism attacked what he considered to be
things of fundamental importance, things on which his mind
was already made up, then was the time his obstinacy, or
apparent obstinacy, made itself felt. Or perhaps the only
answer he would make would be a pitying smile for the lack of
understanding of the unfortunate critic.

He was completely independent in his art, almost un-
consciously so ; the idea of being anything else would never have
occurred to him. Any sort of flunkeyism to the powers, whoever
they might be, was utterly foreign to him. I remember on one
occasion in Berlin when a number of artists, scientists and other
personalities were invited to meet the Soviet Commissar of
Education, Lunatcharsky. We were engaged in a lively and
interesting discussion of Russian conditions, and Lunatcharsky
was being bombarded with questions concerning the many
points of difference that arose. Someone asked what he
considered to be the main theme of modern Russian art, and
without hesitation he replied, ‘^Naturally the glorification of the
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Soviet regime”. This very frank answer caused a pause for
digestion, which was broken equally frankly by Slevogt, who up
to then had taken no part in the discussion : '‘'Well, you seem to
have got just about as far as we were under Wilhelm 11”.

Like all of us who have from time to time to do work which
consists of a number of separate tasks, Slevogt would experience
an inhibition in starting this or that particular task — a sort of
anxiety. For instance, his illustrations to books were very
rarely if ever done in the order in which they finally appeared.
Each one was done just when the fit took him. \Vhen he was
doing his series of illustrations for "Faust” it was a long time
before he could bring himself to start on the title-page
illustration. Whilst he was engaged on this work his only son
was stricken with appendicitis. I decided that an immediate
operation was necessary if the boy’s life was to be saved, I told
Slevogt, and he agreed with an almost curt "Yes”. I had his
confidence, and he left everything to me with carte blanche to do
whatever I felt necessary. That w^as typical of Slevogt too. He
knew that everything possible would be done for the boy, and he
knew there was nothing he could do, so, as worried as he
naturally was, he resigned himself to a completely passive role
and left my job to me without the least interference.

Before I went off with the boy to the sanatorium to perform
the operation I 'begged Slevogt to get to work on the "Faust”
title-page in the meantime, feeling that it would occupy his
mind better than anything else. He agreed, and when I came
back after the operation had been successfully performed to tell
him the good news — it was in the middle of the night — I found
him hard at work at his drawing-board, on which was the
almost finished title-page we know to-day. It was a warm
summer’s night, and the windows were wide open. There was a
breeze, and it had blowm various sheets of drawing-paper on to
the floor. Amongst them was a half-finished draft of the title-
page. I picked it up and asked Slevogt what was the matter
with it. It seemed quite excellent to me, and, in fact, it was. He
told me that whilst he was working a gust of wind had blown
it on to the floor, and that rather than get up and bend down to
retrieve it he had started a new one, the one he was now
finishing. The trouble of getting up, bending dowm, picking up

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

the sheet from the floor and resuming his seat was more to him
than starting all over again.

Once he was in full swing his work proceeded with tremendous
rapidity, as though it gushed out of him like a fountain. I know
from my own experience that many of his best paintings were
done from beginning to end in a matter of hours. When he was
in the mood his ideas and his fancies were inexhaustible. It
was in such moods that his most brilliant improvizations were
rapidly put to paper. One was a sudden idea for a menu for a
dinner at my house. Delightful sketches abounded in the text
or in the margins of his letters. And a theme which invariably
produced a wealth of comic ideas and ingenious whims was the
tragi-comedy of tax-form filling. His letters to my secretary,
Lolo Hutt, who looked after the business side of his affairs, and
in particular his tax troubles, of which, being also an ordinary
mortal, he had plenty, are a sheer delight, with their in-
numerable comic illustrations of his plight. The sketches, many
of them on the official form to be sent in, are eloquent and
require no text for their understanding.

The same Slevogt who could put brilliant sketches of lasting
value on paper in a matter of minutes might just as easily
hesitate for a week before deciding just how to carry out some
apparently quite simple task. And his great pictures, often
rapidly completed once they had been started, were often the
subject of long cogitation before he decided just how they were
going to be executed. Once he had decided how a thing was to
be done and had started work on it the outside world dis-
appeared entirely until the job was done. Time ceased to exist,
and he stopped only when the work was done or when, at least,
a certain culminating stretch of the work had been satisfactorily
concluded. He was so engrossed when at work that his ordinary
bodily needs seem to be suspended. Physical pain, excessive
heat or cold, hunger, thirst — everything was temporarily for-
gotten in the rage of concentration on the work in hand. Oh
yes, there was just one thing he never forgot — the cigar. He
smoked cigars uninterruptedly whilst at work, and I have never
seen a man who smoked a cigar down to the last vestige of a
stump as Slevogt did. He often seemed to be performing a sort
of juggling act with palette, brushes and cigar stump.

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For me as a scientist it was interesting to observe how this
process of enormous concentration overlaid all normal un-
conscious bodily functions. Towards the end of a task he would
be bathed in sweat. It would trickle off his forehead down over
his face and into his shirt in rivulets. And then he would begin
to discard one article of clothing after the other. That was not
Bohemianism. He was not a Bohemian in his manner of life at
all. It was just an instinctive urge to get rid of everything which
hindered him in the least degree. You could talk to him at such
times and he didn’t hear a word you said. You could give him
something to eat and he w’ould take it automatically, but rarely
w^ould he eat it. Ten hours concentrated work at the easel
would go by without a thought for tiredness or exhaustion,
though normally it was not easy to persuade. him to take
even a five minutes walk. At work his physical body was tlie
absolute slave of his mind and of the task on which it was
engaged.

Slevogt was extremely benevolent to the rising generation.
There was none of that very common jealousy of the older man
in him. He was never envious of the success of others. It never
occurred to him that anyone else’s success could in any way
affect his own interests, and, of course, he was right. He
would draw your attention delightedly to the success of some
brother artist, even if he knew him only casually — provided
that success was truly earned. If it were not, then there was no
more stern critic than Slevogt, who had no time for dilettantism.
He liked young people and he got on well with them, but he had
no talent for teaching. ‘T’m no good as a teacher,” he said to
me once. "‘You can’t teach anyone how to feel, and I don’t
know much about materials and all the rest of it.” He was right.
He never placed any very high demands on his own materials.
Almost anything would do, though his material and its
particular qualities interested him deeply. During tlie fruitful
evenings of the little experimental community which became
known as SPOG, firom the names of the artists who formed it,
Slevogt, Pankok, Orlik and Gruenberg, he created marvels on
steel, copper, porcelain, leather, silk, lacquer, plaster, gelatine,
paper or parchment; working with oil, tempera, ink, etc,,
using the brush, the burin, the needle, a feather. And the work

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done ranged from the deepest and most powerful impression to
the lightest feather-like touch*

In my experience artistic ability and perception in a great
artist are not confined to the particular field of his work. He
usually possesses a sound feeling and understanding for other
branches of art and a capacity for sound criticism. This was
certainly true of Slevogtj and in particular with regard to music
and architecture. I once asked him to paint my garden
pavilion. He surveyed the irregular six-cornered little build-
ing with its bow-like embrasure, and at first he could make
nothing of it. He studied it from all angles and from all sides,
and then the inspiration came. He would re-form the room
architecturally by painting two columns and giving it a different
lay-out. Once he had got the solution the actual work proceeded
with extraordinary rapidity. He also did my entrance hall and
staircase and the ceilings.

There has been a deal of discussion as to whether the pillars
which prevent a whole view of his great fresco in the Friedens-
kirche in Ludwigshafen were left standing in opposition to his
desire. This is not so, and he told me that the architect had
approached him with an offer to remove them, but that he had
decided that it would be better to leave them as they were. He
declared that the presence of the pillars had the effect of
dividing up the painting into three parts, whereby a striking
triptique effect was created with impressive contrasts. Another
thing he liked was the way the window embrasures gave a sort of
frame to his work. The only thing he criticized was the un-
fortunate tone of the walls, and the “acid-drop” colour of the
glass. Perhaps some day it will be possible to meet these very
reasonable objections — if the bombs have left the church still
standing and his work undamaged.

Slevogt's nature was vital, and he took great pleasure in the
sight of vigorous movement. On one occasion a film about
Africa was shown in Berlin and he went to see it half-a-dozen
times merely to enjoy one shot in it w^hich lasted only a second or
two — the tremendous leap of a full-grown lion. He was a romantic
and a fabulist by nature, and he found his perfect complement
in the Russian collector and experimentor Gruenberg, our friend
“Bolshie”, who remained his close friend until Gruenberg’s death.
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He loved his home country, the County Palatine, and his best
landscape pictures were painted there. He was by preference an
out-of-doors painter, but the state of his health and his numerous
portrait commissions often confined him to the atelier. His
series of desert pictures show an extraordinary treatment of the
problem of light and shade in nature, which fascinated him.
He had been to Egypt, and he always wanted to go again just
for the sake of the extraordinary light and shade phenomena to
be experienced there, where the desert shadows often appear
lighter than objects not in the shade. Slevogt’s eye was
naturally keen for such matters, and Einstein supported his
observation by declaring as a scientific fact that the shade takes
its light from all quarters and can therefore be lighter than the
darker rocks in the sun, as is often the case in Egypt.

The most valuable of Slevogt’s drawings are those which
represent figures and happenings from the land of fantasy.
His last and perhaps his greatest work of illustration was his
series of illustrations for the second part of ^Taust’*. They are
the graphic commentary of a genius on the work of a genius. He
was less attracted by the first part of ‘Taust*’, though I have
about fifty illustrations in my possession which were done for
the first half and never published. When the great storm which
has been shaking the civilized world to its foundation is finally
over and real peace is with us again, perhaps they can be
published.

Curiously enough, Slevogt began his artistic career as a
singer, but although he was undoubtedly very musical, his
capacity as a painter and graphic artist soon outweighed his
musical ability. However, in one respect it has been of
importance to him in his artistic career; hardly anyone has
worked so brilliantly as Slevogt to provide a worthy background
for the operas of Wagner and Mozart, and his scenery for ‘‘Don
Giovanni” and “The Magic Flute” and for the Wagner operas
at Bayreuth will never be overlooked in any history of the genre.
In his country house in Neucastell in the Palatinate he created
a temple to the figures of Wagner’s operas. Very few people
have been privileged to see the remarkable frescoes which
decorate his rooms there, of figures and scenes from Wagner’s
works. The house is situated in a lonely part, surroimded by

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Janos, The Stony of a Doctor

vineyards. Perhaps one day when the mind of humanity is
freed from the nightmare of barbarism the place will become a
mecca for art lovers. There are other pictures which few people
have seen. During the first world war Slevogtj a man of the
highest ethical standards and a pacifist by nature, was
commissioned by the Imperial Government to go to the front as
a war artist. He accepted and went. What the authorities
expected was, no doubt, a series of happy warriors dying with
proud smiles on their lips. What they got was a series of
pictures which presented the horrors of war in a manner
comparable to the famous pictures of Goya himself. They were
all confiscated, and Slevogt was in disgrace.

It was typical of Slevogt, too, that he preferred animals on
the whole to human beings. Spinoza denied, in company with
the Church, that animals have souls — a hard saying for many
people. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, treated his poodle
like a human being — ^but only because he regarded human
beings as more or less on a level with dogs. In this respect
Slevogt was on the side of the Danzig pessimist, though he was
far from being a pessimist himself, and he surrounded himself
with all sorts of birds and animals, and they were devoted to
him with an intelligence quite human. Of them all his most
loyal and devoted companion was a gander named Hans, who
must have descended from the famous line of Capitol geese, for
he was every bit as alert and intelligent, and no dog ever
followed his master around wdth such pertinacity as Hans
followed Slevogt. His intelligence had become almost legendary,
and for twenty years he waddled in Slevogt’ s footsteps, showing
a keen interest in everything his master did — and even, so it
seemed, in what he said. But, alas, the happiest idyll must
come to an end.

There is a saying of Goethe, ^‘no man dies without first
giving his permission”. In my long practice as a medical man
I have found this saying confirmed again and again. Great
men in particular seem to feel the approach of death. Not
merely do they acquiesce in the inevitable, but they often seem
to set the limits of their life by a deep and inexplicable inner will.
I was with poor Orlik when he died. The death agony lasted
too long for him, and impatiently he struck the counterpane
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with his clenched fist and with a last effort of strength he
exclaimed angrilyj “How much longer then?*’ Within three
minutes he was dead.

When Slevogt went to Ludwigshafen to do the frescoes there
he was firmly convinced that it would be his last great work.
He was not an orthodox believer, but he had a deeply religious
feeling, and a great urge to take religious subjects for his art.
The Ludwigshafen commission was therefore the fulfilment of a
heart’s desire. He was already a dying man, and he knew it.
Towards the end he was in great pain, and wdth palette and
brushes in his hands and a bottle of medicine in his pocket to
alleviate his pain when it grew too bad he worked on with
determination, perched on the uncomfortable scaffolding under
the church ceiling. Nothing but his tremendous will and his
absolute determination to complete the work on which he had
set his heart kept him going. He finished the work and then
returned to Berlin with deep satisfaction in his heart.

“I have done the best work I ever did,” he told me. “I feel
that it really is good. And now you needn’t bother about me
any longer. It’s not worth while.”

From then on he awaited death %vith resignation, happy in
the thought that his work was done. Three weeks later he died.

He was an optimistic nature. He enjoyed life and got every-
thing out of it he could. His character was a happy one — ^far too
happy to be overshadowed by envy of other people, or by
vanity about himself or his undertakings. Character gives a
work of art its final stamp, it is said. Perhaps that is true. I
don’t know. But where Slevogt was concerned there was no
antagonism between the man’s genius and his character.
Perhaps Byron and Wagner, and to a certain extent even
Goethe, were exceptions to the rule. There are certainly more
good people than there are good artists, and it is a truism that it
is not, generally speaking, the cleanest and healthiest oyster
which produces the pearl. But in Slevogt’s case the character
of the artist was on a level with his work, and the level of both
was extraordinarily high.

Max Liebermann was a Berliner born and bred, and he
invariably spoke in the dialect of his fellow townsmen, partly
because it amused him and partly because he loved it. His

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

great reputation was made belatedly in Germany — after he had
already won recognition in France. He remained without any
official acknowledgement of his genius until the era of the
Republic^ but the old orthodox conservative methods at last
gave way, and impressionism (and following on its heels neo-
impressionism) came to the fore and with it Liebermanti, w'ho,
with Slevogt, was its leading representative.

Liebermann was a highly educated man and a fascinating
talker. He was a keen critic not only in matters of art, but in
many affairs of public interest. He liked to talk, and he did it
extraordinarily well, with a great flair for epigrammatic Vvit.
He was an amused cynic, and his humour was well-savoured.
He was proud of his own great ability, proud but not offensively
arrogant. Once in the atelier of a colleague, Count Klackreuth,
he exclaimed in astonishment, “Good Lord, have you got a
rubber!'" And on another occasion he declared, “Drawing is
the art of omission”. He was President of the Academy and
eighty-four years of age when he lost his Fatherland and his
Fatherland lost him. Asked after his health in those early days
of Hitler’s triumph, he declared frankly, “Unfortunately these
days I can’t eat as much as I’d like to vomit”.

When I first made his acquaintance he was getting on for
sixty. His figure was slim and elegant, but already a little
stooped. He had a long, bald head and a glance of Frederician
keenness, as though he were summing up his vis-a-vis for a
portrait sketch. He was a European, but not an internationalist
— in fact there was more than a dose of Prussian patriotism, and
even local particularism, in his make-up. I should place him
with Monet and Pissaro, Israels and Leibl. With Menzel he
was a Prussian high light, and with Leibl a German high light.

No one has yet — despite many efforts — succeeded in satis-
factorily defining once and for all the graphic art of painting.
There are aphorisms from both great and small on the subject.
The last word in wisdom seems to me to be that it does not
matter in the least what a man paints provided he paints it well.
Some will paint in full detail and in perspective. Others will
leave it to the imagination of the beholder to provide what they
omit. But three harmonies must be respected : {a) the harmony
of depth; {b) the harmony of light and shade; and {c) the

384

A SLEVOGT MENU CARD FOR A DINNER-PARTY GIVEN BY THE

AUTHOR

fritz kreisler

Ml'/I AMOKPHOSIS 1)IIRIN(; A I (

Iinjji-c.ssion.s by ( )i Hk.

12 ;

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RKIIEARSAL AT lilE DEUTSCHiiS 'IHEATER. REINHARDT, HAUPTMANN, RH.KE AND

FRAXT HAUPTMANN

SkctcJi by Orlik.

max reinhardx
Sketch by Orlik.

\

SKETCHES OF MAX

PORTRAIT BY REMBRANDT OF HIS SO-CALLED “sISTER” PAINTED
IN 1632, IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR

The authenticity of the picture has been vouched for bv
W ilhelm Bode and Max Friedlaender.

“COUPEUSE d’oNGLE” BY REMBRANDT

The author maintains that the picture of this name at present
in the Rennes Gallery is a copy of this one, which he “picked up”
for nothing. When he got it, it was badly spoiled by overpaint-
ing and it was only after cleaning it that he made his discovery.
It is a portrait of Saskia.

SOUTH FRONT OF H.\US HAINERBERG, THE FAMILY'S COUNTRY
HOUSE IN KONIGSTEIN UN TAUNUS, NEAR FRANKFURT

THE SAME, USED BY THE NAZIS AS A POSTAGE STAMP FOR
PROPAGANDA AFTER THEY HAD CONFISCATED THE HOUSE

HAUS HAINERBERG, NORTHWEST TERRACE

HAUS HAINERBERG, LOUNGE AND DINING-ROOM

EINSTEIN WITH HONORIA MARGOT^ ODILO ANDREW^
AND PETER HARIOLF ON THE AUTHOR’S ESTATE AT
GATOW, NEAR BERLIN

The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

harmony of colour. The subject-matter has perhaps the least
influence on art ; the kitchen chair when painted by van Gogh
is as significant as the dead matador of Manet, and Leonardo’s
Gioconda is comparable with the self-portrait of the ageing
Rembrandt.

Both my friends Slevogt and Orlik had poor eyesight. Slevogt
could not see any details at all. It was as though nature had
deliberately affected the instrument of art in order that the
fantasy and the imagination should be freer in expression. In
art the quality of the product need not deteriorate with the
deterioration of the ‘‘instrument”, if we may so regard the eye.
To take an example from another sphere of art, Beethoven’s
music did not deteriorate as his hearing got worse and he
finally became deaf. And to return to painting, Rembrandt’s
pictures seemed to rise into the transcendental as his eyesight
failed.

Oscar Kokoschka is also hampered — ^in the ordinary sense —
both in sight and colour sight. His wonderful harmonies are
found in his imagination. I once asked him how he painted his
portraits. “I imagine that my subject’s head is in a frame which
is just the size I intend to paint the picture,” he replied. “Then
I paint the parts which stand out most, and then I work my
way back gradually, dealing with each level as it comes, and in
this way I obtain plasticity and vitality in a portrait.”

Only the deliberate and conscious part of art can be learnt.
In painting as in all other arts there are certain handicraft
maxims which can be assimilated, but real art begins where all
systems come to an end, where inspiration and feeling make up
for the lack of technical aids, Liebermann once declared, “Art
comes from ability, and if you’re able to do a thing there’s
nothing in it”. A rather despairing and resigned aper§u of a
great artist. Of course, an artist meets with problems. I have
often discussed such problems with them, but they have all
insisted that there is no generally applicable solution. Ail in all,
rules in art seem to have fulfilled their purpose when the artist
had got to the point where he can safely ignore them. To
respect them to the letter is the part of the dilettante.

However, this nihilism must not lead to the conclusion — a
very false one — that art schools are of no use whatever. But if
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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

an art school is to be helpful it must know its limits. Too much
must not be expected from artistic training. Above all, the
schools must teach their pupils the handicraft side of the
business to spare the novice all the avoidable mistakes and to
give him technical dexterity. But the most important task of
any art school is to create an atmosphere in which ideas and
taste can develop.

Orlik was an enthusiastic teacher. Slevogt never had, I
believe I am right in saying, more than four pupils, and they
were all exceptional. Liebermann never taught at all, probably
because he had no faith in the results. The sum total result of
art-school teaching is very small. There are a very great
number of children who show quite a degree of talent early on.
Such talent may sometimes continue to develop in later life, but
only rarely does it reach any real artistic maturity. Usually the
end of the puberty stage sees the end of the talent, or at least the
end of its development. On the other hand, artistic talent which
begins to develop after the eighteenth year is really promising.

Shortly before Hitler came — at least they were spared that
deplorable denouement — I lost all three of my friends, Gruenberg
Orlik and Slevogt within a few weeks of each other. It was a
heavy blow for me.

CHAPTER XV

DIEFFENBACH AND GAUL

One morning on Capri I was wandering alone through the
countryside to get rid of a Katzenjammer from which I was
very deservedly suffering owing to having spent the previous
evening with ‘“^the last of the Bohemians”, Otto Erich Hartleben,
in his favourite local the “Kater Hidigeigei”. I had not been
that way before, and suddenly I came across a lonely, white-
washed little house with a marvellous frieze around it at first-
floor level. It represented a line of exultant youths happily
mixed up with all sorts of animals dancing off as though to a
heavenly fete. It was an astonishing piece of work, exultant
in its sense of care-free happiness. I was deeply interested in the
mystery, and I went up to the house, where I was met by a very
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old woman who wanted to know my business. I asked her
where I was and whose house this was, and she answered that it
was the house and studio of Meister DiefFenbach, and the next
moment I stood before the master of the house himself, a biblical
figure with long grey hair and beard, garbed in a grey smock
and sandals. He received me with simple courtesy, heard me
express my interest, and then ushered me into a large studio
with an upper light in which half-a-dozen lads were gathered,
all dressed in the Greek chiton, and each with a broad band of
coloured ribbon round his head. They all looked like replicas
of Orestes, and they were engaged in painting. The walls were
covered with pictures, all painted with the same peculiar tech-
nique and each invested with the same notable plasticity. The
subjects were mostly animal ones, but a recurrent motive was
the so-called Faraglioni, the twinjutting rocks of Capri, A par-
ticularly striking painting was of a roebuck with an aureole
formed by the rays of the setting sun, and round the head was
painted the words ^'Thou shalt not kill !”

No one disturbed me, and I looked at the pictures at my
leisure, and was consumed with astonishment. And then I
realized that I was in the atelier of the painter of the wonderful
^Traying Boy”, the painting I had greatly admired in the
Castle of Kaiserin Elizabeth in Miramare near Trieste. I re-
membered being fascinated by the picture. The classic figure
of the boy with eyes and arms raised to heaven was contrasted
with waves and palms thrashed by a tremendous storm and
seeming to leap out of the picture. It was an extraordinary
work, and it and the name of its painter had remained in my
memory. This was the persecuted Dieffenbach to whom we
medical men really owed the first move towards the scientific
study of metabolism.

Dieffenbach was a passionate lover of animals and a con-
vinced vegetarian. He was opposed to the killing of animals
either for man’s pleasure or for his food. For humanitarian
reasons he refused to eat meat, and he brought up his whole
family as strict vegetarians. He was at one time the Court
Painter of King Ludwig of Bavaria, but when the authorities
made him difficulties despite his pri\dleged position he aban-
doned the Court and went to live with his sister-in-law and his

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

children in what was known as the “Felsenkluft’’ near Munich.
But the authorities continued to pursue and persecute him, and
a process was begun to deprive him of the charge of his children
on the ground that his mode of life and his principles of nutri-
tion were opposed to the well-being of humanity and likely to
cause suffering to his children.

The case came up for trial, and the court called for an expert
report as to whether it was possible to keep growing children
in health and strength on a vegetarian diet. The report was
drawn up by the famous physiologist Voigt and the hygienic
expert Professor Pettenkofer, both of Munich University, and it
pronounced against Dieffenbach and his vegetarian upbringing
for children. Both experts admitted that it might be possible for
adults to maintain their health and strength on a vegetarian
diet provided they lived a sedentary life and did not engage in
any vigorous physical activity, but they were both in agreement
that such a diet was inadequate for the growing organism of a
child. The court therefore placed Dieffenbach’s children under
^""normaP’ care.

Now, although those two experts came to a wrong conclusion,
their report became the basis for our modern knowledge of
the physiology of nutrition. Their work led to the establish-
ment of what arc still to-day regarded as the minimum require-
ments of the human body with regard to albumen, fats and
carbohydrates. Their investigations have often been corrected,
revised and disputed, but they retain the credit of having
started us off on the path which led to the modern science of
human metabolism. Their figures were over-schematized, and
neither of them bothered about water or salt content — not to
mention vitamin content, about which nothing was known in
those days. And although they should have been aware of the
inadequacy of their experimental results, they nevertheless
jumped to conclusions of only very conditional validity.

Dieffenbach was therefore not overfond of members of the
medical profession. In addition to this undoubted miscarriage
of justice, he had suffered as a young man from typhus, and
thanks, as he thought, to medical incompetence, it had left him
with a thrombosis of the right arm. The result was the worst
thing possible for a painter : a muscular weakness which made

The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

it impossible for him to use his brush properly. However, like
so many other indomitable men before him, he made a \drtue
of necessity, using the palette knife to put on colour as though
with a trowel It is quite a well-known method of painting
now, but it was very unusual then, and together with his great
artistic ability the method resulted in an exceptional degree of
plasticity and vigour, so that his pictures almost looked like
bas-relief. The best of his work amongst the paintings I saw in
his atelier were in my opinion those which had the Faraglioni
as their subject. This striking natural feature of the landscape
had obviously impressed him deeply, and he had painted the
double rock many times and from all angles as the God-
created pillars of a Templum Humanitatis. He cherished a
great plan of embodying these two natural pillars in a great
House of Prayer to which the dwellers of the earth should go
in pilgrimage to become nobler and more cultivated. Fate
mercifully prevented his realizing this project, which could
have been only a crying and rather ridiculous anachronism in
our materialist days.

I had every reason to conceal the fact that I was a member
of the despised medical profession, and I felt justified in doing
so, for I was not anxious to spoil my welcome from the begin-
ning. We became good friends, and I spent two weeks in what
I found the very refreshing atmosphere of his household. I ate
at his table often, and I must say that each meal w^as an adven-
ture. It certainly was for Dieffenbach, and he went out in
search of the ingredients for each one. He was a convincing
enough advertisement for his own mode of life. Although
already an old man, he had the strength and vigour of a young
one, and he would spring from rock to rock like a mountain
deer when his eagle eye spotted just the right sort of grass or
herb he required for the meal. He was more than a vegetarian,
more than just a non-meat-eater. He was opposed to cooking
as well. He was, in short, a strict, unfired-food addict, the pre-
decessor of Bircher-Benner, the unknown God-Father of the
temple Bircher-Benner raised to the uncooked carrot. I went
out herb-hunting with him and I shared his meals, but — to my
shame, I suppose — I never abandoned my succulent ‘‘Befsteka
ai ferri’’ in the “Kater Hidigeigci’", and when I ate with Dicffen-

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

bach I had either just had one or I went back to have one
afterwards. However, I don’t want to say with this that Dief-
fenbach’s preparations of grass, herbs, etc., didn’t taste good.
They did, and I ate them with relish — if with arriere pensees,

I do not condemn anyone who is so anxious to lengthen his
life that he is prepared to abandon many, or indeed all, of the
pleasures of life to that one end. Let him, I say — as long as he
doesn’t want me to do the same. A strict vegetarian regimen
would be a dismal prospect for me; life would not be worth
living, much less lengthening. I like eating tender, juicy beef-
steaks, and I approve of all they symbolize. When I eat a good
meal I eat a lot, and I always have done (I except the period
already mentioned when professonal exigencies brought me to
the less pleasant carving up of dead human bodies and tem-
porarily robbed me of my pleasure in good meat). Some of my
friends are vegetarians, Bernard Shaw, for instance. But at his
table I enjoyed the mutton chops Mrs. Shaw cooked specially
for me — chacun a son gout.

One day whilst we were out on one of these grass-and-herb-
hunting expeditions DieiSenbach mentioned how worried he
was about his sister-in-law. That was the old lady I had seen
at first. '^She constantly runs a high temperature,” he said
♦anxiously, “loses weight steadily, suffers from night sweats.”
And so on. In short, he described to me a text-book case of
chronic consumption. What was I to do? I dared not give him
advice as a medical man and cause his old hatred of the medical
profession to flare up again. And what would he say if he dis-
covered I had been indulging in a harmless swindle in order to
win his friendship? And then I remembered the sanatorium
founded by Landouzy and Vieuxtemps in Tunis. Garlic was
their specific. And being a herb, or a vegetable, my praise of
it impressed my nihilistic friend. With discreet advice on my
part it was arranged to start the old lady on a garlic cure. I
remained iii correspondence with Dieffenbach after I left right
up to the outbreak of the first world war, and to my great
pleasure I learned not only of his own continued physical well-
being, but also of the remarkable improvement in the health of
the old lady. Vivat garlic !

Sculpture is the simplest of all the arts because it has nature
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as its immediate object — tertium comparationis. It is also the most
primitive of the arts, and it therefore developed to great heights
very early on in the history of mankind. The early classic
sculptures of all civilized peoples — the Egyptians, the Incas,
the Chinese and the Greeks — can hardly be improved upon. In
respect of sculpture classic antiquity is the unsurpassable
model.

Naturally, this does not mean that new great works of sculp-
ture will not go on being produced for our pleasure and
admiration until the end of time. But when we find new de-
velopments of style in present-day sculpture it is usually due
to the introduction of new materials, and thereby the creation
of new inspiration. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to do
anything fundamentally new in sculpture owing to the sim-
pliciiy of the workable material and the limitation of the means
of expression. The art of sculpture lies not so much in the
representation of form as in the extent to w^hich that form can
be given vitality.

However, despite all I have said there was a sculptor in
Berlin who succeeded in creating unusual work. His name was
August Gaul, and he specialized in the modelling of animals,
chiefly on a small scale. In his hands the simplest forms took
on a beauty of line which stamped him as a master. He was a
specifically German artist, and as his genius was soon recog-
nized, everything he did was bought up at once, with the
result that very few examples of his work went abroad to
make him known in other countries.

Unfortunately he suffered from a chronic disease which
hampered him for many years and finally caused his death.
Towards the end of his life I spent many happy hours in his
atelier, where he went on producing fine work right up to the
last. August Gaul was another striking example of how the
human will can keep a failing body going until a task on which
it has set itself has been completed. His last work was the
sculpting of an orang-outang in granite. It was sheer physical
hard labour, as hard as any Irish or Italian labourer ever did
with pick and shovel. August Gaul did it in his declining years
with a carcinoma spreading gradually to all his internal organs.
The day after the work was completed he died.

391

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

My friendship with him and my constant visits to his atelier
gave me an opportunity of doing a little modelling on my own,
and studying the development of masterpieces as they were
gradually formed before my eyes. It was a very interesting and
impressive experience. It was in this period that Gaul sculpted
‘‘The Well of Good Fortune”, which was commissioned by
the Berlin Town Council to be erected in the centre of the
Wittenbergplatz. It is (or was?) a delightful piece of imagina-
tive art, with all the animals, etc., folk legend holds to symbolize
good fortune arranged in fantastic groups, such as herrings,
carps, ducks, piglets and so on.

Apart from being a great sculptor, Gaul was a man of striking
personality. He was a real peasant, a son of the land, in deep
communion with nature and all natural things. He had
received little formal education, but he was a man of sound
intelligence, with a highly developed critical faculty, not only
in artistic matters. Above all, he was good-natured and warm-
hearted. The sketches which he always made before beginning
any work are remarkable for their simplicity and economy of
line and their intensity of feeling. They are reminiscent of
Chinese and Japanese work at its best.

August Gaul has been dead a long time now, and our friend-
ship lies far back, but to me it is still a living and highly valued
memory. In my collection I have a sketch by Orlik of August
Gaul at work, and a drawing of his remarkable group, “The
Five Geese”, which was a happy idea of my father-in-law’s five
daughters brilliantly executed by Gaul for their father, Adolf
Gans, Gans is, of course, the German word for goose.

Gaul hated any affectation or over-refinement in art. Funda-
mentals, whether of idea, line or form, were everything to
him. He even disliked the artificial garden. His own was a
beautifully kept lawn — well, no, hardly a lawn, let us say a
stretch of carefully tended grass covered with literally the most
extraordinary collection of field and meadow flowers, both
native and exotic. It was his hobby. When any of his friends
went on a journey, anywhere, to any country, he would ask
them to bring him back, or send him, just a handful of dust
from the floor of some barn. In such handfuls of dust were, of
course, the seed^ of all the natural flora of that particular
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countryside. The result was that in his garden there were the
wild flowers of India, China, the Alps, the Pyrenees, Jamaica,
Norway and so on. Almost throughout the year the stretch of
grass was a mass of beautiful colour as the various flowers came
into bloom. It struck me as a unique and lovely idea, an idea
such as only a truly artistic nature could have conceived.
When I think of August Gaul, I can always see that wonderful
stretch of grass and flowers in riotious bloom.

CHAPTER XVI

I COME TO ENGLAND

By 1930 the crisis was already well under way in Germany,
and the country was living largely on the vast sums tliat
streamed in from abroad. It was not easy to decide what to do
with all this money, and monumental edifices were erected,
sport arenas axid festspiel halls built. Life became more and
more luxurious, and although warnings began to be heard,
they were ignored. Borrowing and extravagance are hard to
abandon.

The world economic crisis brought the pseudo-prosperity of
Germany’s economic system to an abrupt end. On Friday, May
13th, 1930, Schacht made a speech which had catastrophic
consequences. That was the notorious Black Friday. The stock
exchange reacted violently, and the whole edifice of confidence
collapsed like a pack of cards. Schacht himself was a vain and
weak character. His ability has been enormously over-rated.
He was certainly clever enough always to fall on his feet, but
that was about all. From the National Bank he went to the
Reich’s Bank, praised and complimented on the way by Jakob
Goldschmidt. He was always a man of facile convictions, and
the one uppermost was the one which promised him most
advantage at the time. In the end he became a Nazi. His per-
sonal appearance was comic. He looked like an Aunt Sally at
a fair, his small head perched on top of a very high stiff collar
as though it were there to be knocked off. His scrubby little
moustache and his gold pince-nez looked as though they had

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been stuck on to show patrons which was the front. His speech
against any further acceptance of indebtedness delivered on
Black Friday was perhaps the most stupid and untimely in the
financial history of Germany. It caused catastrophe and tre-
mendous confusion, and it made the situation much worse than
it need have been.

Unemployment rapidly became a scourge, and before long
the figure stood at six millions. The dissatisfaction of the prole-
tariat naturally increased dangerously. The middle classes
grew panicky, and feared for the safety of what little they had
been able to save after the war-loan swindle and the inflation.
The Nazis grew more and more insolent and arrogant, and
the beautiful iridescent bubble blown by the banks burst with
a loud plop. In this desperate situation Germany had an
impotent government and a senile President. Various emer-
gency decrees were issued to patch the holes in the threadbare
garment of the Republic. Capital sought salvation in flight.
‘^Society” danced and dined and was more riotous than ever
before. The thoughtful withdrew in despair and waited in
resignation for what might come. Existence in these circum-
stances became more and more intolerable. Everyone hated
everyone else, and envied his neighbour. The crisis, of course,
affected people in different ways. There were stiU rich people
with luxury cars, but in those uncertain days they were often
bombarded with stones, whilst the more humble Ford rattled
past unmolested. It was a risk to show oneself in some parts of
the town well dressed.

Before long rioting and street demonstrations became fre-
quent occurrences, and bloodshed began. The Communists
enjoyed considerable support, but their party was weak and
badly organized, and they were unable to hold the Nazis in
check, for the Nazis enjoyed the tacit protection of the Reichs-
wehr and were subsidized to the tune of many millions by the
leaders of Germany’s heavy industries. On the other hand, the
Communist movement was persecuted and oppressed, primarily
by the Socialist Ministers, and hampered in its defensive
measures against the attacks of the Nazis. Political disputation
entered into social life, and lost nothing of its violence there.
Any discussion of the situation almost invariably ended in open
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hostility. The best thing to do was to withdraw into the
domestic circle.

Matters came to a head like an avalanche. The Nazi propa-
ganda was clever. They told everyone just what he wanted to
hear. The masses were promised greater welfare benefits,
social improvements and anti-capitalist measures. The heavy
industrialists, who put up the money for this propaganda, were
promised a free hand and security of capital, and, of course,
protection from Bolshevism. The nationalistic large-scale pro-
prietors and industrialists were fools enough to be taken in by
this, and so were masses of other people.

Karl Duisberg, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the
great German dye trust, I.G. Farben, a vain man always
anxious to push himself forward, got up a subscription amongst
the industrialists to purchase an estate and present it to the
Reich’s President Hindenburg. The fund was over-subscribed,
and the estate was bought and presented — not to Reich’s Presi-
dent Hindenburg, but to his son Herbert. This was obviously
done in order to avoid the death duties which would be payable
on the death, presumably not far off, of the old man. Questions
were asked in parliament as to the legality of this trick, and
Secretary of State Zarden replying for the Government declared
that they were not prepared to countenance the evasion.

In addition to tins unpleasant affair, it had become public
knowledge that the East-Prussian Relief Fund, amounting to
800 million marks, had been used not so much to assist de-
pressed agriculture in Eastern Germany as to line the pockets of
the Junkers. In short, Hindenburg and his family and their
Junker friends were in an awkward spot. But the very man was
available to get them out of it — ^von Papen, who dissolved parlia-
ment and made any responsible control or investigation im-
possible, However, that could only be a temporary measure,
and any responsible government which subsequently took office
would be compelled to take up the question afresh. Obviously
therefore no responsible government must be allowed to take
office. Negotiations were opened up with Hitler, and ended
with his appointment as Reich’s Chancellor of Germany.
Clearly the whole question of the Hindenburg family had been
satisfactorily settled as part of the negotiations, for one of the

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first actions of the new Government was to see to it that the
Hindenburgs had no further trouble with the Fiscus. This piece
of self-seeking infamy undermined what was left of public
probity. Any scoundrel could fish in the muddy waters the
affair had churned up. Germany’s public life was rotten and
things stank.

Even before they took office the Nazis maintained a wide-
spread and well-organized system of espionage, and when
Hitler v^as finally in power they had an up-to-date card index
of all the people who had exposed themselves in one way or
the other by opposing them — ^perhaps only by word of mouth
in private circles. The normal rights of the citizen were swept
away and arbitrary brute violence ruled. Goering publicly
declared that the simplest Brown Shirt had unlimited power
over anyone not a member of the Nazi party. In the brutish
anarchy that followed, life became intolerable for a civilized
human being.

It was enough for me. I am not a party politician, but I can-
not breathe easily in an atmosphere of force and fraud in which
no man can be sure of even tihe most fundamental rights of a
civilized human being. I decided to leave Germany together
with my family. Not unnaturally, after half a lifetime spent in
Germany, it took me some weeks to put my affairs in order,
and during that time I was enabled to see the new regime at
work. At first I wanted to leave the move until my children
had at least concluded the current school year. I knew that
I was no imknown quantity for the Nazis. My libertarian views
were well known, for, far from making any attempt to conceal
them, I had always proclaimed them. That was quite sufficient
to make me an object of hatred. However, I was a man with
powerful friends both inside and outside Germany, and the
Nazis knew it. I felt that this would serve to protect me for as
long as I needed. However, one day I was earnestly warned by
the head gardener at my country house not to visit the place
again without first having taken precautions for my personal
safety, because the local Nazis were known to be waiting for the
chance to get me out there in the country away from the
publicity of town life.

I don’t think it was any lack of personal courage that made
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me decide to leave the country without waiting for the end of
the school year. The whole thing sickened me, and I felt that
the sooner I was out of it with my wife and children the better.
Very well, I left the country in which my wife’s people had been
settled since the fourteenth century, and to whose culture and
well-being they had contributed not a little, the country in
which I had spent thirty-five years of a fairly useful life. I, too,
had contributed something to its well-being and civilization;
for one thing, I had done quite a deal to educate its growing
generations. However, it had now become a shame and a dis-
grace to the civilized world, and to leave it was the only tiling
to do, but it was a sad end to a life’s work.

First of all I went to Switzerland, a country of ideal civic
morality, and there, in its clear mountain air, I got rid of some
of tlie prison atmosphere I had breathed in Nazi Germany,
and got over some of the disgust I felt. My feelings were com-
pounded less of hatred and a desire for revenge than of deep
contempt and an almost physical revulsion. I have always been
a healthy man. ‘'Nerves” have meant nothing to me. And if
I was ever tired, it was only a healthy tiredness after hard
work. Exhaustion was something I had never known. It is
easy to see, therefore, that I have no constitutional tendency to
neurasthenia ; but in that first period I had an unconquerable
urge to a neurasthenic reaction: the desire to spit in disgust
whenever I heard the name of Hitler.

In Switzerland I had time to consider at leisure where I
should finally settle and spend the rest of my life, for it was
quite clear that what was happening in Germany was no pass-
ing phase, no temporary sickness soon to be followed by re-
covery. It was a difficult problem for me. Normally such a
decision is never required of the individual. The place where
he will stay and spend his life is more or less settled for him by
his parents, as it was for them by their parents, by the fact that
he is born in a certain country and is its citizen, is brought up
in its culture and develops strong ties to it. Generally speaking,
it is true of a man, just as it is of a plant, that he will do best
where his roots have developed. His native ground is a source
of strength. The Antaeus legend is based on a very profound
truth. This strong relation with one’s homeland seldom if evei

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dies completely. And if one has to change one’s environment,
then new roots form in the new country, but the rhythm of
earlier life is retained wherever one is. I had already left my
homeland once, but Hungary was not far off, and from Berlin
I could easily go home whenever I felt inclined. Now the
situation was different. I had to go farther. I was quite deter-
mined not to leave Europe. But where was I to go?

I could not go back to a primitive country like Hungary and
be happy. In addition, Hungary was much too close to Ger-
many. I could never have settled down in the corrupt Balkans.
I had loved Italy and admired its people, but I could not leave
Germany to settle in another country ruled arbitrarily by
another paranoic megalomaniac. And France for me has
always been a country of confirmed Xenophobia, with no
attractions as a permanent residence. Its proud motto
^‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” is compelling, but I knew
very well that the reality behind it was very different. Despite
a thin veneer of democracy and hberty, the fundamental ten-
dency of the French people is a stiff-necked and obstinate con-
servatism. No, not France, therefore. And Spain, too, was a
dictatorship with a militarist, Primo de Rivera, at its head. For
all its apparent solidity, Portugal was a volcano of underground
■ revolutionary rumblings. Holland, yes ; Holland was a freedom-
loving country of upright citizens, a country of education,
tradition and culture, but unfortunately Holland was geo-
graphically too near the plague spot of Europe. The same was
true of Denmark. I had no desire to live in the Scandinavian
countries, and Russia was closed to me. And of Austria and
Czechoslovakia they were already saying: ‘^The rats are
boarding the sinking ship”.

This all sounds very much as though I chose England for
want of anything better and under compulsion, but that is not
true. Quite apart from all other considerations, England would
have been the country of my choice had I ben perfectly free to
choose, as it was the country of my limited choice. From the
beginning I had decided, but it was incumbent on me to can-
vass all possibilities, for I was not only choosing for myself, but
for my wife and, above all, my children. England’s reputation
in Europe was high, and my own opinion confirmed it. I felt
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

that the interests of my three children, who were at that time
eight, thirteen and fourteen years old, would be best looked
after in England. The only doubts I ever had concerned my own
inadequate knowledge of the language, and the climate. On the
other hand, my children had enjoyed an English education from
the beginning — at the hands of their Scotch governess. My mind
was made up, therefore, and I travelled to London via Paris.

I arrived in the hot summer of 1933. London at the end of
the season seemed dead. We went in the first place to Frinton,
and then I succeeded in renting a beautiful old house in Tliorpe-
ie-Soken in Essex. Apart from my cars and a number of
travelling trunks, we had rescued none of our possessions from
the Nazis — oh yes, I had almost forgotten the very long Busch-
Zeiss telescope which I had bought for my eldest boy, Peter
Hariolf, who was interested in astronomy — I think I mentioned
that his first lessons in that fascinating science were given to him
by Einstein, so he had had a good start- I felt that it would
be too heavy a blow for him to lose his beloved telescope,
so the monstrous thing was carted along with us. My daughter
Honoria and my younger son Andreas Odilo were still in the doll
and toy stage, and their nursery possessions helped them over
the transitional period. Theirs was still the limited horizon of
childhood, and their well-being was more easily secured. Hap-
piness in childhood consists chiefly in the satisfaction of the
accustomed little desires and habits, and parents must maintain
their little world for them as long as possible.

My friend Kurt Hahn, the founder of the famous Salem
School at Bodensee, recommended me to Winthrop G. Young,
and it was from this new-found friend that I received all the
advice about educational matters I required. My eldest son
was sent to Harrow, and my daughter went to Hayes Court in
Kent. I remember asking a little doubtfully at Harrow whether
it would be possible for my boy to continue his study of
astronomy. On the Continent such a question would have
been regarded as the folly of a weak-minded and doting father.
At Harrow my question was apparently regarded as normally
intelligent, and before long a Society for the Study of Astronomy
was formed with six members, my son’s magnificent telescope,
and a tower specially adapted for the purpose.

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

I left Peter to his own devices for the first time in his life, and
not without a certain amount of misgiving on my part, though
he didn’t seem to mind. I had heard something — too much,
perhaps — of the self-discipline of the pupils amongst them-
selves, and I was wondering how my boy, with his continental
upbringing, would adapt himself to it. However, I needn’t
have bothered, and, indeed, I didn’t unduly, because I had
great confidence in English schools and their methods of educa-
tion, and I felt that their system was based on reason, good will
and, above all, long experience. Continental education is based
entirely on formal education, and I felt that perhaps the sudden
transition might come as a shock to a child experiencing Eng-
lish methods in strange surroundings and for the first time. In
the upshot all three of my children not only acquired all the
knowledge necessary for their education, but they were also
happy in the process. After a few weeks they forgot their
former schooling and lived completely in the present. The
primary reason for which I had come to England had been
justified to the full, and I felt it was no mean tribute to the
English educational system.

Later experiences, of my younger son at Westminster School
(and at the Grammar School in Aylesbury during the Blitz)
and of the elder boy at Cambridge, only strengthened my con-
fidence and increased my enthusiasm for English educational
methods. I think I am entitled to express a judgment because
not only do I know the continental system very well, but I saw
to it that my information in this coutitry was not one-sided. Let
it not be thought that my enthusiasm is uncritical. Not at all,
for I can see clearly enough where improvements would be
helpful, but in this case it is a question of making something
which is already good still better, and it would be a great pity
if such improvements as are desirable were brought about to
the damage of a long and valuable tradition. Obligatory
general schooling was introduced into this country compara-
tively late in the day, and certain things were omitted which
should be introduced now by intelligent reforms, for the number
of illiterates is still relatively high for a cultured and civilized
community.

However, I regard with real misgiving the present tendency
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

to approach the German ideal in educational matters. Herbert
Spencer’s principle that it is more important for the country
that its schools should develop character rather than educated
mediocrities is one that I enthusiastically applaud. Physical
training through games kills two birds with one stone. It has
been said so often that it may sound trite to say it again, but it
still remains true that games develop character, sound judg-
ment and healthy ambition, whilst at the same time they dis-
courage jealousy and envy. They also make it possible for the
less-talented pupil to have his share of success — by physical
training. Sport teaches poise and patience; it develops self-
confidence, encourages comradeship and a community spirit.
What point is there in sacrificing such advantages for the sake
of forcing excessive education on untalented pupils? Particu-
larly as it very often means stifling the joy of life and producing
boredom, if not bitterness.

I hope that no one will accuse me of underestimating the
desirability of mental training because of what I have said in
favour of physical training as well. No one upholds the training
of the mind in things of the mind more than I do, but I cer-
tainly adopt the English viewpoint that it should not be one-
sided. I will even go so far as to admit that the average educa-
tion of the average Englishman suffers by comparison with the
Continent, but as one of the teachers here said to me frankly
in answer to a question of mine, Intelligence is not every-
thing”. And most certainly it is not.

CHAPTER XVII

I GO BACK TO SCHOOL

Having successfully solved the problem of my children’s
education, it became time to think of my own future and what
I was to do in it. I was already in the middle fifties, but I felt
far too vigorous to think of retiring. And then it seemed to me
a pity to waste what I had accumulated of knowledge and ex-
perience in my profession, when I could still be of use in the
workaday world, when I could still help others and earn my

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

own living at the same time. It did not take me long to make
up my mind to continue with my profession.

There are many and varied opinions concerning the propriety
of a foreigner’s coming to another country and earning money
in it. I feel that to regard the whole problem merely from the
point of view of the money that is earned, and completely to
ignore what is given in return, is a narrow view. The moral and
other value of a doctor’s work in healing the sick is worth more
to any community than the money he receives in return. In any
case, the money is spent again; it goes in taxes which help to
maintain the State and it goes back into all the channels of trade
and industry and circulates freely to the general benefit. And
then, as far as doctors are concerned, the patient still has free-
dom of choice. He will always go to the doctor who suits him
best.

The medical profession is, of course, essentially international,
just as diseases are. One might therefore expect that the world
would stand open to the doctor, but the truth is that hardly any
other professional man is so limited in his freedom of movement.
It is a matter of great difficulty for a doctor to practise in any
country but his own. Every country is most jealous of its privi-
leges, and every country protects the interests of its own doctors
against foreign intrusion. The methods used are the ordinary
ones of trade and commercial interests, and the internationalism
of science and knowledge might as weU not exist. Here is a field
which should not be overlooked when the world settles down to
revise and reorganize its international relationships. It badly
needs attention ; at the moment it is overgrown with the weeds
of hypocrisy and narrow self-interest.

An important question like public hygiene — to which the
practice of medicine belongs — should not be left to particularist
interests. The material well-being of a privileged professional
class should not be the only criterion. Bismarck bluntly put
medical practitioners into the same class as any other business
men. He granted the profession a certain autonomy, but he was
not prepared to rely entirely on their sense of justice, and he
kept them under strict control. Their university education in
Germany was placed under the ordinary Minister for Educa-
tion. Hygiene and Public Welfare were placed in the hands of

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a jurist, not a medical man. There was a commission in Ger-
many whose task it was to regulate the influx of non-German
doctors and see to it that the high standards of German medical
science were upheld, but on the other hand the Ministry had
the right to permit any medical man to practise in Germany
over the heads of the faculty and the commission. Thanks to
this provision, it was always easily possible to bring in foreign
specialists, etc., and thus benefit German medical science. The
principle on which the State operated in such matters was the
interests of the country as a whole, and not the interests of a
privileged professional class.

In England the position is particularly difficult. The medical
profession has a very powerful trade union, and it has barri-
caded itself on all sides against possible invaders. There are one
or two loopholes through which some foreign medical men can
slip, though it is not always the most worthy who can take
advantage of them. There is reciprocity between England and
Italy and between England and Japan, so that Italian and
Japanese doctors can practise in England without any difficulty.
And again, oddly enough, the Archbishop of Canterbury has
the right to grant permission to any medical man to practise in
this country (Lambeth Qualification), provided only that he
registers with the General Medical Council. All others who
want to practise in the United Kingdom, and are not fortunate
enough to avail themselves of these side doors, must first attend
a teaching hospital for a course which lasts from one to two
years. Even this is not automatic, for these hospitals may reject
anyone in their own discretion, or place his name on a waiting
list. Once the candidate has been accepted at such a hospital
and gone through the prescribed course, which embraces prac-
tically all the medical disciplines, he comes up before' an Ex-
amination Board. If he passes, then he can register with the
General Medical Council, and after that the Home Office will
grant him permission to practise in some part or other of the
United Kingdom. With sufficient industry all these barriers
may be surmountjed within a period of from two to three years.

It must be remembered that all formalities have to be com-
plied with by every foreign medical man (with the exceptions I
have mentioned), even if he was at the top of his profession in

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his own country and enjoys an international reputation. Any
registered doctor in the United Kingdom is forbidden under
pain of having his name struck off the General Medical Register
to co-operate with or consult any doctor not so registered, the
result being that it is theoretically impossible for even the highest
foreign authority to be consulted, no matter how urgent the
case, and such an authority certainly could not treat the case
himself because there is not a doctor throughout the length
and breadth of the land who would dare to assist him.

In the year 1910, that is to say about a quarter of a century
ago, I was granted permission to practise in the German Reich
without a previous examination ‘‘on the basis of recognized
scientific attainments”. But that was Germany. In 1934 and in
England there was no other course open to me if I wished to
continue practising my profession but to go to school again,
despite the fact that in the long meantime the tale of my ^^recog-
nized scientific achievements” had lengthened to a not incon-
siderable extent. I therefore applied to the Medical School of
St George’s Hospital to be permitted to pursue the necessary
studies. This was granted, but when the time came for my
examinations I had to go farther afield, to Edinburgh and
Glasgow.

All this sounds rather grotesque, but it was by no means so
bad as it sounds. As a student again I made many valuable
friendships and got to know the medical life of this country, so
to speak, from the bottom up, and I must say that I was always
treated with great courtesy and helpfulness. One thing my new
life as a student did show me was my own failings and weak-
nesses as a teacher and examiner, and at the same time the re-
fresher course, which covered the whole field of medical studies,
taught me quite a lot I did not know and made good much of
the damage done by time and tricks of memory. Whether the
time spent in this way would have been better spent on my own
scientific work is another question. However, I am not com-
plaining, and I think I made the best of it.

Psychologically I found it both depressing and disturbing to
share the nervous anxieties of the student and the inevitable con-
viction of inferiority, though the kindness and consideration of
my teachers did much to help me over my troubles. I found that

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all the old examination fever came over me again. Most of my
examiners were young enough to be my pupils, but I met with
neither arrogance nor vanity from any of them. But that, of
course, was the happy experience which came afterwards ; be-
forehand I had all the usual nervousness of the student coming
up for his exams, and in my case there was the added anxiety
for my prestige in the event of my being floored by this or that
question — ^not to mention the danger of being ploughed alto-
gether. And then, of course, there was the language handicap.
Further, the English examination system is based on systematic
categorization and on rote knowledge rather than on the ready
application of knowledge. This system places a great premium
on memory. A good memory will retain all the formal answers.
Mediocrities often have excellent memories, whilst really bril-
liant men sometimes have poor memories. The results obtained
by such a system of examination are therefore of a very hit-and-
miss nature.

I felt rather sorry for the examiners, and I have no doubt they
felt rather sorry for me. In any case, they did their duty with
understanding and dignity. Examiners always work iii pairs,
and this custom helps to approximate better to a just verdict.
Results are summed up by a points system. I have never suc-
ceeded in discovering the principle behind it. I take it that the
examiners develop a genius for the points system as tea or wine
tasters do for their particular tasks. The examiners have a hun-
dred points to play with, and somewhere along the scale they
must come to rest. Perhaps their genius is comparable with an
absolute sense of pitch. In any case, the system works, and that
is the great thing. After all, there are wine tasters who can de-
termine not only the vintage year and the place of origin, but
even the particular vineyard from which the grapes have been
gathered.

Examinations, to my mind, are a painful and depressing ex-
perience — not to say a humiliating one. The examiner knows
that he cannot be absolutely just. He also knows that if the
tables were turned the student opposite him might very easily
floor him with questions, and he also knows that in the psycho-
logical state brought about in the examinee by the whole pro-
ceedings it is impossible to obtain a clear picture of what he

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really knows and really can. The examiner is rather in the
position of a crack machine-gunner in a good trench : as the
poor wretches come up for the charge he can mow them down
in perfect safety — and in this case they canH lob over a grenade
or two. When a mean spirit is behind the professorial machine-
gun the result is a sadistic slaughter of the innocent. A base and
sadistic character revels in such a situation and enjoys the sight
of the poor wretches writhing in front of him. These are the
stern examiners. Men of character, brains and ability are
always mild and understanding examiners. They feel sym-
pathy with their victims and are delighted when they can dis-
cover favourable points. They do their best to discover and
bring out what the candidate knows rather than what he
doesn’t know.

I am not under the impression that I have made any very
new or profound observations concerning the problem of ex-
aminations. Everyone of intelligence and experience knows
perfectly well nowadays that examinations offer no proper
measure of any man’s ability. They are a necessary evil, and
we have to make the best of them. However, although that
recognition is, as I say, satisfactorily widespread, there is still a
great deal of quietism, and very little effort is being made to
bring about an improvement. There are one or two things
which might with great benefit be adopted. For one thing, the
examiners themselves ought to be under the control of superior
examiners. This system of examining the examiners is at the
same time a very valuable method of educating younger
teachers and examiners. And then, more weight should be
placed on common sense and reason, on the understanding of
the principles involved and on a general understanding, rather
than on mere rote cramming. I think I am right in my experi-
ence that it is by no means the really capable and intelligent
men who can fill themselves as full of formal knowledge as a
sponge and squeeze it out at will. Another important point is
that formal knowledge crammed into a student is of little lasting
value. Once the examination has been safely circumnavigated
most of it evaporates.

Once the student has become a doctor and comes face to
face with all the usual problems, there will be a much greater
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call on his ambition, conscientiousness and responsibility than
on the stuff he learnt by heart when preparing for his exams.
What he does not know offhand he will surely make it his
business to find out, and his patients will not suffer from the
fact that the answer to every possible question is not on the tip
of his tongue. Training should he practical and demonstrative.
The systematic part can be looked up in* any hand-book, and
the patient of the doctor who remembers it is no better off than
the patient of the man who has to look it up.

I have never been in favour of propounding riddles to ex-
aminees. I prefer to put simple facts before them and see what
they can make of them. And I don’t like the painful system of
mnemotechnique. In fact, both in written and oral examina-
tions I think that the examinee should be given every oppor-
tunity of consulting his books and looking up whatever he needs
in order to answer any question. If this is done it gives the ex-
aminer a much better idea of the common sense and capacity of
the examinee. Above all, it provides information of the greatest
possible value, because it shows whether the examinee is really
at home in his subject and whether he is capable of using his
books intelligently to provide the knowledge he needs. It gives
the examiner an excellent opportunity of forming a sound
general judgment on the examinee’s horizon, on the way his
mind works and whether, faced with a difficult problem to
which he does not know the answer offhand, he will be able to
settle it for himself by going to the proper sources of knowledge,
or whether, on the other hand, he is likely to make a mess of
things as soon as he is faced with a practical problem he does
not happen to have met with before and whose solution he has
not learnt by heart. In this way it is easy to discover whether
the candidate is merely a machine for memorizing words, or
whether he has truly grasped the principles behind the words.
If in such circumstances a student fails, then the examiners can
plough him with a good conscience and the firm conviction that
he is not likely to prove an ornament to the profession and a
benefit to his patients.

There is no danger that incompetents wiU slip through more
easily in this way. On the contrary, as things stand it is very
easy for the incompetent with an excellent memory to get past,

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I have seen them doing it. When a candidate uses the word
scilicet I usually feel quite certain that he made the acquaint-
ance of the subject for the first time the evening before. The glib
use of such phrases as ^'Of course”, and ^'Naturally”, and ^'As
is well known”, is generally an indication that the examinee
heard about it only the day before. But the student who passes
the type of examination I propose must really be familiar with
his material — even if he can’t oblige with a rote answer straight
away. I do not, of course, deplore the ready answer, and I have
no objection to the possession of a generous store of memorized
knowledge. Let it be counted in favour of the fortunate candi-
date by all means. But let no undue importance be attached to
it ; that is all.

There is often a big difference between the man who knows
and the man who can. The man who knows need not necessarily
be able to apply his knowledge practically. The man who can
does not necessarily know all the details, but he can see the
relationship clearly. He knows how to go about the task prac-
tically and how to put knowledge to good purpose. The men
who can are the great organizers of industry and, in the last
resort, of science too. An example of the first type of scientist I
would say was Faraday, of the second Marconi. A man like
Lord Kelvin combines the advantages of both types. The men
who can are likely to occupy the most important posts in our
research institutes, because once the problem is formulated their
particular ability soon provides the answer. As far as the medi-
cal profession is concerned, knowledge must be combined with
ability. The two things must be co-ordinated as equally as pos-
sible, and therefore medical training should not concentrate oh
knowledge alone to the extent that it unfortunately still does.

Well, to return to my own affairs, I passed my exams, and
having done so successfully, I swore that I would never submit
to another one — ^no, not for all the initials in the world. I am
quite prepared to conclude my life as a simple M.D., and never
see the magic word “Member” or “Fellow” behind my name.
In any case, I am already well stocked with qualifications and
initials. They will see my time out.

Having happily passed my examinations, I then had to make
a start. In that, of course, I had advantages. My name was
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already known in the medical world. Thanks to colleagues with
whom I had co-operated in this country, to diplomats who had
consulted me in Berlin and to my many English patients who had
come to Berlin to place themselves in my hands, it soon became
known that I was in circulation again, and before long my fiat
became too small for my practice. I trust that I shall not be
thought immodest when I say that, in fact, my opening of a
practice in London was something of an event. I am not inter-
ested in sensations, but the word “event” is used in this connec-
tion with strict propriety. From the really sick people to the
“lion-hunters” who spend their lives collecting specialists, they
all streamed into my consulting-rooms, until my main problem
came to be how best to dam the stream.

Part of this was, of course, due to the fact that foreign doctors
hold a very special fascination for English patients. The Euro-
pean spas, clinics and sanatoria obtained their main contingents
from this country. Carlsbad, Bad Ems, Kissingen, the sanatoria
of the Black Forest and Switzerland, Aix-les-Bains, Vittel and
Vichy were English colonies. And now, instead of the mountain
going to Mahomet, Mahomet went to the mountain. It was
therefore, as I have said, something of an event. However, in
the end I reduced my practice to a comfortable minimum, and
the event became a condition.

Thus the situation had changed : in the first place the fact
that I was a foreigner had been a great disadvantage. It now
turned into an advantage, although it also made me the victim
of a certain amount of disagreeable professional jealousy,
but that is of no very great account; it is an international
phenomenon, and not specifically English.

CHAPTER XVIII

MEDICINE IN ENGLAND

JVIedic AL LIFE AND practice in England differs in some respects
from the Continent, and it took me some time to get used to new
ways. The responsibility the doctor accepts in England when he
takes a case is much greater than it is abroad. This is quite in

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accordance with the general mental attitude of the Englishman,
who, if he spends time and money, expects results. He is quite
prepared to give the doctor and his medicine a fair trial, but if
nothing comes of it, then that doctor sinks low in his estimation.
This attitude on the part of the patient is matched by the atti-
tude of the doctor towards his patient. The English doctor is
almost indifferent towards the incurable case or the case which
is difficult to cure, and in diagnosis and prognosis he is almost
brutally frank. Here I think lies the fundamental difference be-
tween the English doctor and his continental colleague. It is
this attitude of the English doctor towards his patient which, I
think, explains the fact that in his own country his reputation
is not as high as it might be.

With his reserved prognosis, his almost sentimental attitude,
and his perseverance in the treatment of chronic or hopeless
cases, the continental doctor is, I think, at an advantage. If he
succeeds, despite the difficulties, in this or that chronic case,
then he is sure of the undying gratitude of his patient, but if, on
the other hand, he can make no impression on the case even
after prolonged treatment, he may very well find himself an
object of hatred and even persecution. The question arises, of
course, as to which is the better attitude to adopt. Looked at
purely professionally, even commercially, it certainly seems
more advisable, at least safer, that the doctor should go no
further than the disagreeable facts warrant, and that he should
tell the patient, ruthlessly if need be, what he knows and thinks
as a doctor. In other words, honesty is the best policy, and it
certainly, on the whole, suits the positivist Eiiglishman.

However, there are dangers in this attitude, because medicine
is not an exact science, and the conclusions drawn by a medical
practitioner can rarely be based on absolutely certified facts —
except the final conclusion which writes finis to all cases. Other-
wise facts are not certain enough to justify adamant conclusions.
The medical man can, and often does, meet with surprises even
when by the very nature of the case it would appear that no
further surprises are possible. How often have I heard people
say that they had been given up by the medical profession and
were nevertheless still alive at — ^whatever the age may be,
eighty if you like. When a doctor has once been incautious
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enough to write off a patient’s life and then the. patient insists
on continuing to live as a malicious reproach to the science of
medicine, the only thing to do is to take it philosophically as a
warning not to jump to conclusions rashly* Medical prognosis
is largely a matter of statistics. A sickness is considered danger-
ous if a lot of people die of it, and not dangerous if only a few
die of it. Obviously, that is a very rough-and-ready procedure.
An additional factor is the constitution of the patient — and the
possibility of a mistaken diagnosis.

In all the circumstances, therefore, I hold that not only
caution but also optimism is advisable. If a man dies, then
there may be a dozen and one reasons to explain the fact, but
if he lives on in spite of the doctor’s death sentence, then, un-
fortunately, there is only one generally accepted explanation —
the doctor’s stupidity. An optimist remarks that the theatre is
half full ; the pessimist declares that it is half empty. They are
both right, but there is an important difference of attitude.
There are some doctors whose general outlook is profoundly
gloomy and who foresee almost exclusively all the disagreeable
developments which may ensue. And there are others who prefer
to concentrate more on all the possibilities of recovery. The
ones are the meticulous and the anxious ; the others are the con-
fident — ^and the active. The golden mean can be summed up,
I feel, in the dictum : think pessimistically and act optimistically.
There is then no need to overlook any possibility, either good or
bad, and no need to abandon hope or rob the patient of his.
A solemn-looking doctor is like a depressant for a sick man, who
needs encouragement. A doctor entering a sick-room should
bring confidence and hope with him. A cheerful manner — I
don’t mean a frivolous one — ^is much better than an assumption
of solemn importance, and as good as a tonic, and that is just
what every patient needs.

I remember a case — I grant you it was an extreme one — of a
susceptible young girl who was suffering from nothing worse
than inflammation of the throat. I was making the rounds as
assistant to the clinical specialist, Professor Ketly. We paused
at the girl’s bedside, and my instructor delivered a lecture with
solemn face and sepulchral voice, of which the patient, of course,
could understand nothing. We had just moved on to the next

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

unfortunate when the girl sprang out of bed, rushed to the win-*
dow and tried to throw herself out. By good fortune she was
prevented. The ward, of course, was in an uproar, and when
we got the poor thing back into bed and began to investigate
the reason for her extraordinary action, we discovered that she
had been frightened by the gloomy expression on the face of the
Herr Professor and thought that her case must be quite hope-
less, so she decided to end it all. At that even the Herr Professor
permitted himself to smile soothingly.

Naturally, even this smiling-face business can be overdone,
and there are even circumstances in which it is not advisable.
Some patients need to be pitied, and they get very upset if the
doctor fails to take them and their unique case with proper
seriousness. And there is also the type of patient who greets you
with the words : “I’m sorry to say I feel much better to-day,
doctor’’. However, generally speaking, in serious cases and in
cases of relapse it is better not to tell the patient anything which
might make him feel worse. No one wants to hear that he is
worse ; it makes him worse than ever. Even if a patient demands
to know the truth, that does not always mean that he really
wants to hear it. No man likes to be told that the limit of his
days is at hand, and generally speaking a patient should not be
told that he is going to die, or that his case is hopeless. In all
my long experience there have been very few cases indeed when
I have felt it necessary to suggest the Viaticum. No one has
learnt from my lips that he was about to die. And no doctor
should, in my opinion, advise a patient to make his will. Things
of that sort can reasonably be left to those around the’ patient.
The doctor should be a source of hope — ^last hope, perhaps, but
certainly not a judge pronouncing sentence of death.

Even with incurable cases it is better to adopt a hopeful per-
spective. There is nothing selfish about this, for the patient will
die in the end, and then the doctor stands there refuted by
death, but at least time has probably been won for the patient in
which he can get used to his misery and alter his attitude and his
demands on life. If a doctor is frank about the approach of
death he may increase his own credit when death supervenes,
but he has not helped the patient’s mental state. Personally I
would sooner that my judgment was doubted than my heart.
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So much for my opinion. I am well aware that there is some-
thing to be said for the other side. Doctors must choose for
themselves. It is not the sort of thing that can be put to a vote,
because I know that the vote in favour of frankness would be
overwhelming — ^people feel like that when they are well, but I
have never known a sick man who wasn’t grateful for a com-
forting lie.

Nothing confirms my standpoint more than my experience
with sick doctors. Doctors are the simplest patients of all to look
after — and the most credulous. The consoling poppycock I have
retailed to the innumerable doctors who have consulted me I
would hardly have dared to set before an intelligent farm
labourer. But on one occasion at least I didn’t come off best. A
famous colleague developed locomotor ataxy with all the symp-
toms and all the complications set down in any text-book. It
was a perfectly clear case — classic, in fact — and I treated him
for fifteen years. For every symptom I had a consoling diagnosis
— of course, I need hardly say that this consolatory swindling
makes no difference whatever to the real diagnosis and the
corresponding treatment. In the end my poor fiiend developed
an infection of his paralysed bladder and died of it. Shortly
before his death, when he quite obviously knew that he was
about to die, he said to me : ‘^My dear old Janos, thanks for all
you’ve done for me; and thanks in particular for your really
moving efforts to deceive me as to the seriousness of my con-
dition. I knew perfectly well all the time what the real situation
was, but you were so good to me that I hadn’t the heart to un-
deceive you.” Well, there I stood the deceived deceiver. But
was I really so wrong in my attitude, even in that case?

I have admitted already that the attitude of English doctors —
the frank, if necessary ruthlessly frank, attitude — ^is probably the
more suitable one for the English mentality, but when I came
here I was already too old to alter my ways, particularly as my
own attitude towards i?atients derives naturally from my own
character and make-up. In all other purely medical ways I have
changed wherever I thought it desirable.

My experience of English patients has been a happy one. The
Englishman is a good patient. If he consults you and agrees to
accept your advice you can be quite certain that he will do pre-

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

cisely what you tell him to do. The incidence and the course
of various sicknesses vary, of course, from country to country,
and they are different in England to what they are in Central
Europe, for instance. Digestive troubles, endocrinal gland dis-
turbances, allergic sicknesses in the form of asthma, colitis and
liver complaints, catarrhal disorders like rheumatism, fibrositis,
neuralgia, herpes (shingles), nasal catarrh, sinus trouble, organic
nerve troubles, arrested development of all kinds, speech impedi-
ments, etc. — all these complaints are more frequent in England
than in Central Europe, and of greater severity. On the other
hand, certain complaints, such as arteriosclerosis, take on milder
forms here and their consequences are less serious. Otherwise I
don’t know that one can speak of any fundamental differences
between medicine here and on the Continent. I have learnt
new methods and heard opinions here which are unknown on
the Continent, and on the other hand I have been able to
acquaint colleagues here with things which were unknown to
them. This is always the case, and it is the strongest argument
for the widest possible organization of an exchange of know-
ledge as between one country and the other. The State should
undertake the beneficent task and put an end to the scientific
and professional jealousy which still hampers its performance.

I am not suggesting that foreign doctors know better than
their English colleagues, but in many respects their methods are
different, and some of them are better. At the same time the
continental doctor, whilst giving, would also receive. Both
parties would have an excellent opportunity of revising and re-
judging their own methods. It would work equally both ways,
and both sides would gain nothing but advantage from it. I
know, of course, that medical journals and international con-
gresses encourage this exchange of knowledge, and that is all to
the good, but they do not satisfactorily bring about the exchange
I have in mind ; they do not really represent an internationaliza-
tion of medicine, and that is what is required. In addition,
economically speaking, it is better to import teachers from
abroad rather than send students to spend years studying
abroad, and that is the same for all countries. It is not done to-
day to the extent it should be, largely on account of nationalistic
obscurantism and petty jealousy.

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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England .

To appeal to the national heroes of medicine as proof that
this country need not be ashamed of its general level of medical
knowledge is entirely beside the point. No one would deny for
a moment that the English genius has flowered on this field as
on so many others. The history of medicine could not be written
without such names as Harvey, Jenner, Stokes, Addison, Hun-
ter, Starling, Hopkins and Haldane, and, indeed, many others,
though, of course, other countries have contributed equally
great men to the general cause of medical and scientific know-
ledge. Science is of its very nature international, and it will
always be so. No benefit can come from erecting artificial
barriers as between country and country where scientific know-
ledge and practice are concerned. Humanitarian and scientific
interests alone should guide scientists, and never narrow
materialistic and nationalistic motives.

I can hardly imagine that in revising their status medical men
would be content to see their profession degraded into a busi-
ness. If that is done, then it will undermine the special ethical
position of the profession of medicine, over whiclx the various
councils and boards watch so jealously. And if the medical pro-
fession is made into a business, then it would obviously be unfair
to grant it any privileges beyond those granted to any other
business, and the usual business methods would have to be per-
mitted, such as advertising, etc. Doctors must choose between
ethics and business ; they can’t have it both ways.

We want no commercialization of the medical profession, but
on the other hand it is a hypocritical sham-ethic which prevents
a doctor from enjoying the material fruits of his discoveries and
taking the just return for what is invariably long and hard
work. No other profession sees anything unethical in its mem-
bers receiving material rewards for the products of their genius.
It is a distinct hardship for doctors that medicines cannot be
patented ; only the process of manufacture and the name can be
protected. There may be something to be said for that from the
ethical point of view, because naturally it would be wrong to
withhold medicine under a legalistic pretext from anyone who
needed it. But at the same time to deprive the doctor of the
proper reward of his effort, and leave the profits to the share-
holders who do nothing for suffering humanity beyond putting

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the medicine on the market, and that greatly to their own
profit, is sham ethics.

The highly moral guardians of medical ethics can be big
shareholders in a crematorium or in a factory for the manufac-
ture of explosives without arousing any comment. For my part,
I chose the middle way. For my invention of “TheominaF’ I
took nothing for myself, and the share which was allotted to me
I contributed to a foundation for poor students. I was certainly
not prepared to see the money go into the pockets of the share-
holders. There is no doubt that this false principle of lucrum
cessans for the inventor to the benefit of the imitators and dis-
tributors has resulted in a certain sterility in the production of
medicaments.

Whilst working with my friend Eichelbaum in the Zuntz
Laboratories I saw an example of how encouraging material
incentive can be. Eichelbaum lived by making analyses on a
mass scale for other people. His tariff was low, and it was the
mass that did it. On one occasion he had to produce cellulose
from a certain material, at the same time freeing it from albu-
men. After the separation of the albumen the required cellulose
was left. It so happened that Eichelbaum caught a very bad
cold at the time, and had to go to bed with a high fever. In his
delirium he got the idea that the laboratory servant Beutner had
flung away the cellulose obtained with such difficulty and kept
the undesirable albumen. God granted it to him in his sleep !
It was the loss of his honorarium that worried him more than
the failure of the experiment. When he recovered, he remem-
bered his delirium fantasy and began to think over the matter,
and saw the great nutritive possibilities contained in the dis-
solved albumen. He sold the idea and the details of his process
to the chemical firm of Bayer in Elberfeld for 100,000 marks and
a subsequent partnership. That is the behind-the-scenes story
of the &st manufactured concentrated foodstuff*, which was
called Somatose. It was the beginning of a new big industry —
the concentrated food industry, which had a huge annual turn-
over in Germany and a still bigger one in England.

Are the discoverers of tilings of such tremendous importance
for economics and industry to be excluded from any share in the
benefits? That would be both senseless and unjust. One of the
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rewards of a thing well done may be, as Emerson says, to have
done it, but it shouldn’t be the only one; at least, not in such
circumstances. This whole question of what I have termed sham
ethics in the medical profession needs re-examination. Should
there really be any special ethics for the medical profession at
all? The fundamental ethics of the medical profession are the
same as those of any other profession. The doctor must be a
decent citizen performing his task to the best of his ability and,
of course, retaining such personal secrets as the exercise of his
profession may reveal to him. But why all this solemn swearing
of oaths on the point? Does a bootmaker need to swear to make
good boots? Does a tax inspector or a bank clerk have to swear
that he will reveal no professional secrets? If they do so they
are punished, and there is no necessity for any further sanctions
against the doctor who similarly offends.

I feel that the whole thing comes from a disparaging estimate
of the medical profession rather than otherwise. Decorations,
titles, distinctions and qualifications are certainly valuable ; they
make it easier for social intercourse to function. They indicate
that the private life and repute of the person in possession of the
titles, etc,, have been thoroughly gone into, and that the indi-
vidual is thus prima facie worthy of trust, but it gives no indica-
tion whatever that the man not in possession of such ‘ 'positive
stigmata” is not equally reliable and trustworthy. I am in
favour of distinctions, but not of privileges. They are a source
of injustice and irritation, and they encourage professional
obscurantism. I am firmly convinced that if the hippocratic-
hypocritic ethics of the medical profession were abandoned in
favour of lining up the doctor in the ordinary way in the ranks
of any other community of decent men and women, the result
would be nothing but gain all round. Voluntary and inborn
decency is more effective than anything which can be obtained
by compulsion.

Quite generally the medical profession carts around too much
ballast. The most powerful medicament of antiquity and of the
middle ages was belief, confidence. The first doctors were
priests, and they sought to raise the esteem in which they were
held by all sorts of religious hocus-pocus, and to increase the
awe in which they already stood as the earthly representatives
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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

of the God or Gods. To insist on the derivation of modern medi-
cine from Hippocrates is a mediaeval fiction. There is no
shadow of a proof that we have received anything positive from
him. He was born, as far as we know, in the year 460 b.c., on
the island of Cos. Later on Alexandrine medicine credited him
with all sorts of marvels, and a so-called “Hippocratic Collec-
tion” was established, and this was made legendary by Celsus
in the Augustinian era and by Galen in the second century after
Christ. All that we can learn from the “Hippocratic Collec-
tion ” is a certain experience, and that is often falsified by de-
liberate interpretation. To regard this hodge-podge of nonsense
as a guiding principle for modem medicine is nothing but a
frivolous flirtation with antiquity. If we considered modem
medicine apart from all this hippocretinism, we should find not
the slightest gap either in medical knowledge or in the practical
ethics of the medical profession.

In the middle ages the medical profession, if such it could
then be called, was surrounded with a deliberate cloak of mys-
ticism. Its mixtures were prepared to the accompaniment of all
sorts of incantations and ceremonies with a view to making the
resulting medicament more effective. At the same time every-
thing possible was done to keep the unfortunate patient in
ignorance and to encourage his superstitious reverence for the
mumbo-jumbo. The ignorance of the medicine man was con-
cealed behind a wall of silence ; even the most indifferent mat-
ters were carefully concealed from the patient. Cabbalistic in-
cantations were in common use to add to the general air of
mystery and mysticism. And even when light began to pene-
trate into this ignorant darkness, and the incantation swindle
had to disappear, the profession still maintained what may be
termed a secret language — a sort of medical cant which is still
predominant to-day. A dead language, Latin, was used as the
least likely to be understood by patients, and with it all sorts of
mysterious signs equally incomprehensible to the layman. And
to crown it all and make certain double sure an indecipherable
hand became the convention in the medical profession, and it
is so down to this day.

In my opinion the time has come for all this traditional
secrecy to be thrown overboard as imworthy of a dignified pro-
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fession. Why should a patient not be permitted to know exactly
what the doctor proposes to dose him with? Why should he not
be able to read it clearly on the box or bottle, written in his own
tongue? The old riddle-me-ree form of prescription to the
apothecary should now be replaced by perfectly straightforward
and clearly written instructions. In any case, the Latin know-
ledge of ninety-nine out of a hundred doctors wouldn’t give
them a third-form pass-out, and they might just as well use
Egyptian hieroglyphs. They know no more than the routine
scribble, and if anything out of the ordinary is required they are
sunk. Even the genitive form is beyond them, and so it is left
off by shortening.

I think it would be a good idea if every bottle and every box
of medicine ordered by a doctor were provided with a second
copy of the prescription, written of course in plain language and
in plain writing. This would not only provide a check on
whether the prescription had been properly interpreted by the
chemist, but it would also help the doctor’s memory if any
query arose after say a few weeks concerning its composition.
In short, it is greater frankness and less secrecy we require. The
science and practice of medicine to-day is far enough advanced
to be worthy of respect. There is no need for secrecy ; no need
to pretend that we know everything. We ought to have courage
enough to admit frankly what we don’t yet know.

And the solemn theatricality of so many doctors’ 'Visits” !
Too many of them still go about their business as though they
were on their way by special invitation to the Royal Enclosure
at Ascot. One suspects that they have to rely on a borrowed
dignity, and fear that to drop their formal guard for a moment
might result in damage to their reputation.

In my opinion the institution of charity hospitals such as it
exists in this country is an unworthy one. It is the duty of the
State to see that its sick citizens receive the medical care and
attention they require. It is their right, not a matter of charity.
I like to live my life on my rights, and not on the charity of
others, and no fellow citizen should be forced into that disagree-
able position. Further, any hospital institution which must rely
on charity is liable to get into the hands of a clique. The clique
need not necessarily be a bad one, and in a highly organized

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

country like this the system does function, but nevertheless a
State, council or urban-controlled institution with proper medi-
cal men in charge is much to be preferred to one which is under
the control of ambitious, if ever so well-meaning amateurs.

The worst evil of the present system is that future generations
of doctors receive their training in 'schools attached to such
charity hospitals administered by charity boards with honorary
members. The teaching bodies are also made up for the most
part of former pupils of these schools. The science of medicine
is developing rapidly, and any factor which tends to sluggish-
ness, as this system does, should be removed. Its chief evil is
nepotism. Nepotism is always bad, but it is particularly so in a
teaching body where only personality and knowledge should
count. The final decision as to who should educate the medical
youth should be in the hands of an impartial and expert body.
In a parliamentary democratic State this decision should lie in
the hands of a Ministry for Education and Public Hygiene.

All tills seems doubly important with regard to a corporation
which tends to subordinate its objectivity to its esprit de corps.
The Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons have been
called colleges for mutual admiration, and there is more than a
little truth in the gibe. They are very sensitive towards the
least threat that their comfortable harmony might be disturbed
by energetic strangers. No serious reformer would dream of
threatening the honourable traditions of such institutions, and
they have done much to preserve the fine traditions of the old
giants of medicine for each succeeding generation; but tradition
must not stand in the way of new blood and new ideas. Worth,
and not narrow-mindedness, should be supreme in science.
Hundreds of medical students emigrate every year from this
country to go to foreign institutions of learning, but only very
few foreign teachers find an opportunity for teaching in this
country. Opportunities are being constantly missed, to the
detriment of the community, thanks to the lack of a central
controlling body.

Let us now turn to the much-disputed problem of the costs of
medical treatment. It plays a great and important role. There
is an old saying that if you treat for nothing your work goes for
nothing, and there is something in it. Non-paying patients are

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incurable patients — that is to say, you never get rid of them.
Naturally, I am not referring here to panel-scheme patients,
and every doctor will know what I mean. Not that I want to
lay down any hard-and-fast rules or set up any irrefragable
principles. The best principle is perhaps not to have any hard-
and-fast principles. According to Bismarck it was only the man
who was too lazy to think for himself who needed principles as
a crutch to help him along. A man leading a fruitful life can
generally spealang do without them, but society generally can-
not, because a social being must necessarily adapt himself to
others. A distant similarity can be observed in the medical pro-
fession considered as a l3read-and-butter matter, which, of
course, it is also. The problem is a difficult one, and it has
never been satisfactorily solved. I refer to the question of
medical fees.

There is no invariably reliable key. Most doctors do their
best to be fair to their patients whilst not robbing themselves,
but the whole question remains in an unsatisfactory state. The
famous surgeon Kerr of Halberstadt always requested his
patients to present their income-tax assessment, and he would
then fix his fee for the operation at lo per cent, of the total. But,
of course, in operations and deliveries the thing is much
simpler, and what the doctor performs is clear and visible, and
the success obvious. But for an ordinary practitioner who can
guarantee no results of any kind for his pains the only approxi-
mate method is to judge the time involved, and then to fix the
fee according to a settled tariff. We are faced with a wall of
convention to make things more difficult. It is easier and
quicker, and it requires less knowledge, to perform an operation
for appendicitis than to make a responsible diagnosis and follow
it up with appropriate treatment, but although a patient is
quite prepared to pay a considerable fee for the operation, he
doesn't feel the same way at all about a practitioner’s fee which
is no higher for a long course of treatment.

In Russia doctors used to leave it to the generosity and grati-
tude of their patients, and I believe they did quite well out of
it, but although one can well imagine that the character and
way of life of the old Russian aristocracy and educated middle
classes, with their almost legendary generosity, made the system

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work quite well there, it would undoubtedly lead in next to no
time to the complete bankruptcy of the medical profession in the
Argentine^ for instance. And I can’t imagine its working very
well in any Western European country, so that won’t do either.
Another method sometimes adopted is the indiscriminate pay-
ment in advance for a consultation (very much like buying a
ticket for the theatre), but that favours the well-to-do at the
expense of their less-wealthy brethren. In addition, payment in
advance suggests in ordinary business relations some sort of a
promise of results, and what doctor can honestly agree to that?
And now we have arrived back at where we were in the beginning :
it is an insoluble problem. Either we must leave things more or
less as they are, or agree to the nationalization of the medical
profession.

As far as the medical profession is concerned, I feel that
although it would protest vigorously, it would in the end accept
the nationalization proposal, but in that case I am afraid the
future of the medical profession would suffer. I believe that the
thing which attracts men into the profession more than any
other is the prospect of independence it offers. The medical
profession is in some respects similar to the profession of arts —
perhaps that is why one finds so much artistic ability and so
much love of the arts amongst medical men. Another thing for
a man of ambition is that his future prospects are unlimited.
There is no reason why he should not climb to the top of the
tree. He is judged by the public according to his personal
capacities. And finally, he hopes for the right to take such
patients as suit him and to reject those who do not. And then,
again, from time to time he can take what holidays he pleases.
In the best case he has the hope of a very large income, and in
any case he will be assured of a reasonable one on which he can
live comfortably. And finally, though not least important,
there is his interest in sick people and in the medical science of
curing their ills.

Now, if nationalization abolishes most of these attractions, we
shall have a body of medical officials rather than a body of
doctors, and even then the inflow will be limited because, in
view of the changed prospects of the profession, the time and
money necessary to become a doctor will be better placed else-
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where. I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes, but in my
opinion the army medical corps and, generally, official doctors
demonstrate more or less what sort of a medical body we are
likely to get from nationalizaton and what we may expect from
it in the way of scientific advancement. I am well aware that
my opinion will not be generally popular, because at first glance
the nationalization of the medical profession seems to offer a
greater opportunity of securing social justice in medical treat-
ment than is available at present. No doubt nationalization
would work up to a point, but I am convinced that after about
twenty years of it any country would be heartily glad to go
back to the old system and free the medical profession again.
But then another twenty years would be needed to make good
the damage done to public health and hygiene and fill up the
profession again with good men.

Let us look at the question from the standpoint of the patient,
and I think the argument against nationahzation is still more
cogent. It is generally admitted that the most important factor
in the success of any treatment is the confidence of the patient.
That is therefore not the point at issue. The point is, does that
confidence contribute to the success to the extent of 92 per cent,
or only 73-2 per cent.? Every doctor will do his best to win his
patient’s confidence, both by his personality and his knowledge
— to build up his practice if for no other reason. Now, 90 per
cent, of the work in any profession is sedative and only 10 per
cent, really keeps the interest alive and active, and the same is
true of the medical profession, but where doctors are concerned
another and very important factor comes into play : a doctor’s
interest in his profession is kept 100 per cent, alive by his
ambition to become a popular, that is to say, a sought-after
doctor, and thereby (let us have no hypocritical pseudo-
modesty) increase his income. But once the medical profession
is nationalized and the doctor is nothing more than a State
official, I can well imagine that he would prefer to have fewer
patients for the same income, and that his ambition, if such it
can be called, would be directed towards reducing his practice,
until finally he arrives at the happy state where there were no
patients left at all to interfere with his peace.

Let me admit right away that this picture has been painted

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in rather exaggerated colours, and that, in fact, the natural love
of his profession which inspires most medical men would do
something to ameliorate the worst disadvantages. A doctor’s
love of his profession usually remains with him to the grave, but
although that is true it is also true that a man needs success in
life as much as he needs air to breathe. Life is frankly a battle
for success professionally, socially, sexually, in sports and
pastimes and finally, when we advance greatly in years, to
secure ordinary regular physical elimination by way of bowel
evacuation. Gallen has assured us that success in this respect is
in itself quite enough to make a man happy in the third period
of his life. However, the most common measure of success in our
society is the earning of a satisfactory amount of money. I say
satisfactory, but, in fact, the urge never ceases, and we see rich
men — ^millionaires many of them — who never lose the urge to
make money. The drive for pecuniary as well as professional
success stimulates the doctor to increased effort, as it stimulates
every other man. It is not the possession of money in itself
which is the important thing; the miser is a rare anomaly,
whereas generally speaking doctors are lovers of life. No,
money is the evident sign of an appreciation of their work.
You can call that human weakness if you like, but humanity is
inconceivable without its weaknesses, of which, naturally, doc-
tors have their fair share. It is a point which should therefore
not be overlooked in any attempt to revise the status of the
medical profession. It is unfortunate, I think, that in vital ques-
tions of this sort so many men haven’t courage enough, or are
too ashamed, to own up to their possession of a common
weakness.

What are the qualities which a doctor must have if he is to
be successful in his practice? A really famous doctor is as rare
as a really famous prima donna. If she is beautiful, then she
can afford to have a figure wliich is not perfect. If she can sing,
then she can afford to be ugly. If she has exceptionally beauti-
ful legs, then it doesn’t matter if her nose is not all it might be.
Only once in a blue moon is a being born in full possession of
all the attributes which go to perfection. And the same is true
of the great doctor. He must be of good and agreeable appear-
ance, he must be well educated, he must be cultured, he must
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be clever, he must have good manners, and, of course, he must
know a thing or two about his job. But if a doctor has real per-
sonality he can do without almost all the rest. A doctor must
have something which raises him above the others in some way
or the other. Every outstanding difference with a personality
behind it will find its own following. A doctor with a long and
unusual beard, another one with a distinguished elegance of
manner, another one with an abrupt character, or one who is
something of a fop — I have known representatives of all these
various peculiarities who were successful medical men. In
short, it is true to say that every doctor who is successful owes
it to his own personality. The success must silence all criticism.
There are some doctors who give confidence purely by their
appearance and are able to work wonders. Charcot is said to
have been such a doctor. The strongest personality I ever knew
amongst doctors was Leyden. When he entered a ward every
face lighted up. The most obstinate hysterical troubles dis-
appeared by magic as soon as he placed his hand on the fore-
head of the patient. In consequence he was worshipped by his
patients — and dubbed a charlatan by some of his colleagues.
However, that did no damage to his reputation amongst the
general public, because they have a facility for seeing through
mere professional jealousy, and when they do, then the more
their hero is attacked the more they worship him.

Professional jealousy is common to all walks of life, and doc-
tors have no monopoly of it. In the case of the doctor the
rivalry develops from an irritation of that self-confidence which
is so necessary to the exercise of his profession. Put two fighting
cocks in a pit together, as used to be done for sport in this
country and stiU is in Spain and some other parts, and they go
for each other at once and for no particular reason. Similarly
for a doctor the mere sight of a rival practising is quite enough
to irritate him and produce choleric feelings. It is so, even
though many would not admit it, but in the last resort it does
little harm, for your doctor is a disciplined member of society,
and its chief effect is to spur him on to greater achievement in
his own practice.

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

CHAPTER XIX

THE MEDICAL MAN IN ENGLAND

Oneofthe things which has struck me as most extraordinary
during my stay in this country is the social status of the medical
man ; so much so, in fact, that although I am mindful of Oscar
Wilde’s warning (^'A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a
great deal of it is absolutely fatal”), I nevertheless feel that the
unprejudiced observations of an intelligent outsider could be
heard with benefit — I hope, of course, to avoid the fatality.

Balanced as it is between the moral aspect and the profes-
sional aspect, I feel that the medical calling is always likely to
occupy an exceptional position in society, but the Englishman
does not care for ambiguity in social matters ; it is a source of
embarrassment and discomfort. He likes to know definitely
where a man belongs. In the case of the medical man he arrives
at some sort of clarity by a rather summary judgment which
strikes me as extremely unfair. He still regards the doctor as a
sort of barber, a tradesman. The doctor earns his money
directly, but the essence of social caste in England is to earn it
indirectly. The more indirectly a man earns his money (and
the more he earns of it, of course) the higher he stands in the
social hierarchy. To sell things over the counter stamps a man
as no gentleman, but to let someone else sell them over the
counter for him is quite all right. One can then be a Wool-
worth.

Science, including medical science, has no place in the draw-
ing-room. The doctor is something like the artist. The artist
belongs on the platform in the concert hall, or at the Burlington
Gallery — ^not at the exclusive dinner-table. In this respect the
literary man is to some extent an exception. He can tickle one’s
vanity — or be a dangerous enemy. The Court, the Upper
House, the House of Commons even, the Guards of course, the
City (with reservations), the Civil Service, particularly the
Foreign Office, and an episcopal dignitary to say grace at
table, the County families, and there you are. But unless you’re
a branch, a twig or even a leaf of the recognized tree, you are
lucky — and you ought to feel honoured — if you are occasionally
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permitted to be present to alleviate, if ever so little, the chronic
boredom of society. In short, the social position of the medical
man in English society is a dubious one, and quite definitely the
social position of his continental colleague is considerably
higher.

I am a little prone to exaggeration when I want to make a
point clear, and the comparison I am about to make should be
taken with the usual pinch of salt to taste, but I consider that
the state of affairs in England to-day with regard to artists and
medical men is similar to that which prevailed in Austria round
about the year 1800, when, after society had dined, the musi-
cians were allowed to enter, much like well-trained domestic
animals, and entertain the guests. A Haydn, a Mozart, a Beet-
hoven and a Schubert were permitted to make their bows to
their social betters in this way — after, of course, they had been
fed with the domestic personnel. Rousseau in France has told
us in his memoirs how he had to feed with the staff before enter-
ing the drawing-room, and on one occasion at least we know
that Beethoven rushed out of Schloss Graetz without his hat and
stormed for miles, as far as Troppan in fact, in a fiiry of rage at
the humiliation to which his proud spirit had been subjected.
The grandson of this same Lichnowsky of Schloss Graetz was
the German Ambassador to this country before the first world
war, a man of great culture and, naturally, of a very different
attitude towards the arts and artists. Things, in short, are not
so bad to-day — even in England. Many Englishmen have
assured me that ‘‘things are improving’’.

Indeed, from fifth Barons upwards they are, for then one is
socially elevated enough even to snub the snobs. Things are
difierent amongst the newer aristocratic families. Their position
is not yet sufficiently established. They are not sufficiently
elevated themselves, and have not been so long enough, for all
they do to be right. They have to think twice before hob-nob-
bing with their doctors, who are, after all, only a cut above
hairdressers. And this attitude does not come from a feeling
that the man who knows their bodily ailments — and very often
the troubles of their souls — ^is not a suitable person for an inti-
mate friend; it comes from the social consideration due to the
other guests. The strict caste organization of feudalism has

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

lived longer and is better preserv^ed in England than in any
other country. The word ^^snob” comes, according to one ver-
sion, from s{ine) nob(ilitate), but whether this is so or not, it is
certainly true that aristocratic snobbery and caste arrogance
often takes on grotesque forms. It is even said on.veiy^ good
authority that certain members of the oldest aristocratic families
absented themselves from the coronations of the House of
Windsor on the ground that its aristocratic pretensions were of
altogether too modern an origin.

On one occasion a fourth Baronet, the owner of a big steel
works, left my consulting-room and was observed by my next
patient, a ninth Baronet, whose money came from coal. When
he came into me he observed disparagingly: “I didn’t know
that ironmonger was a patient of yours

On the Continent the scientist, including the medical man,
could climb the highest rungs of the social ladder as a matter of
right. It is not so in this country. Once when I was in London
long before the first world war I was at dinner with the German
Ambassador, Stahmer. Amongst the guests was an English
scholar of some renown. He was obviously ill at ease, and he
apologized frankly for being gauche, declaring that it was the
first time in his life he had dined with an Ambassador.

I have the impression that the medical men of this country
are beginning to feel their unfair social treatment. A regular
army officer makes material sacrifices in the interests of his pro-
fession and accepts its modest rewards, but in return, at least,
he enjoys a compensatory social position, and the same should
be true of the doctor, who should not have to trail along behind
the City man. Something can be done in this respect by the
doctors themselves by encouraging a greater professional pride.
Some day this social injustice will be rectified, but so far it is
not thought proper even to talk about the embarrassing situa-
tion. The matter is ignored with dignity — and can be felt
bitterly for a lifetime. It wouldn’t matter so much if it were not
for the fact that doctors’ wives, and in particular their daughters,
suffer from it.

The conspiracy of silence is partly due to the fact that each
doctor likes to pretend that he personally is better treated
socially than his colleague. In any case, when plans for the
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future status of the medical profession are under discussion this
particular abuse should not be treated lightly. The question of
recruitment to the profession is partly dependent on the social
status of the medical man. The so-called better families rarely
let their sons become doctors, and when they do the sons usually
become biologists or theoreticians of some sort or the other, and
rarely practitioners. In consequence, the medical profession is
largely recruited from the less prosperous middle class, whose
social outlook and characteristics are different from those of the
upper social strata, so that there is an obstacle to easy inter-
course. A semi-proletarian origin has many advantages — a cer-
tain freshness of spirit, for one thing — ^but it also has disad-
vantages, and one of them is the general atmosphere it creates.
It is wrong to make the caste system entirely responsible for the
trouble. There is a natural gap, and it must be bridged, or,
better still, filled in. That will finally come about when social
justice abolishes class divisions altogether.

For one thing, science must be popularized on a much wider
scale, though, most certainly, the medical profession must not
be turned into a sort of artisans guild. At present modern sur-
gery, as represented in the Royal College of Barbers and Sur-
geons, enjoys a mediaeval reputation as a worthy, but hardly
scientific, professional guild. Its members are honest and quite
respectable, but not socially acceptable. To-day there are still
certain houses and certain districts which are, so to speak, out of
bounds for doctors. Whole districts of London are barred to
doctors whilst in other districts they practise on top of each
other. Perhaps this explains in part the grotesque situation in
much-lauded Harley Street. No one is really quite sure whether
the doctors in Harley Street give the place its reputation, or
whether the street gives them theirs. In any case, almost every
doctor who has pitched his tent there after the public, or
science, or himself has appointed him consiliarus, has his own
tariff. ^‘Harley Street Doctor” is a cachet; it carries with it the
nimbus of absolute authority, so much so that many patients
hardly think of the name of the doctor, but only of the corpora-
tive idea of “Harley Street Doctor”, just as one speaks of a
Saville Row Tailor.

I think I have suiBBcient experience and knowledge to permit

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

myself to judge between the doctors of various nationalities, and
I can say quite definitely that everything I have seen suggests
that English doctors in no way lag behind their continental
colleagues. In fact in some respects their fund of school know-
ledge exceeds that of the continental doctor. Knowing the high
qualities of the English doctor I have often wondered how it
came about that quite broad sections of the British public feel
a certain mistrust towards their doctor compatriots, and I have
never found a really satisfactory explanation. The mistrust is
certainly unjustified. The foreign doctor who practises here is
favoured by this mistrust felt by so many otherwise patriotic
Englishmen. It causes them to think more highly of foreign art
and foreign medicine. It is possible that in the medical dis-
ciplines which demand diagnostic and therapeutic fantasy the
continental doctor has an advantage over his English colleague,
but that is quite compensated for in the more positive medical
disciplines, such as surgery, gynaecology, bacteriology, etc., in
which English doctors are in the lead. And as technicians they
are unsurpassed.

Their training is on the whole better than the average con-
tinental training. As I have indicated, it is rather more prac-
tical than theoretical. On the Continent the University has the
privilege of training the coming medical generations, and the
material at its disposal is restricted. The tremendously valuable
material to hand in the public hospitals is practically unused
for training purposes, whereas in this country the medical
schools are usually attached to the big hospitals with all their
wealth of opportunity for study. Together with the universities,
these schools provide specialized training for doctors after they
have taken their ordinary degrees, whilst for special research there
are various institutes with absolutely first-class teaching staffs.

From my general experience in various parts of the world I
should say it was easiest in England to obtain the qualifications
permitting the individual to succeed with comparatively modest
industry and talent. On the other hand, there is no other
country in the world where real zeal for learning is more en-
coxiraged than in England or where there are greater oppor-
tunities for learning. In short, as I see it, England is a Dorado
for both the less and more talented and industrious students.
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If there is any criticism I have to make of the English system
of medical training it is that the individual teaching institutions
enjoy unlimited autonomy and that the central State institu-
tions take no heed of their inner structure. As a result of this
circumstance the possibilities of refreshing and interchanging
teaching personnel are too limited. Each teaching body repre-
sents something like a phalanx against intruders. That may be
of importance for the preservation of tradition, but it excludes
the healthy factor of competition and inhibits the free play of
forces. In England when a man begins his activities at one
institution he usually ends them there. The system has its
advantages, but it is not very fruitful. These problems, of
course, require far closer attention than I have been able to
give them here, and what I have written is intended as no
than a general sketch. It is interesting, incidentally, to ndte
that the teaching system in Scotland is quite different; the
system there is more closely related to that which prevails on
the Continent. It is perhaps not for nothing that Edinburgh
enjoys the highest reputation of all the medical teaching centres
in the United Kingdom.

As a foreigner I have perhaps been rash to criticize at all, but
I am comforted by my knowledge that in England even the
criticized do not lose their sense of humour and proportion. The
English are, on the whole, a critical people, and no one criticizes
them more sharply than they do themselves. For the foreigner,
used to other things, they criticize each other with a forthright-
ness and even rudeness unthinkable on the Continent, and they
don’t take criticism of themselves in bad part, though I should
warn outsiders against indulging in it in the same hearty
fashion. It is very much as though someone after communion
with himself had come to the conclusion that he had been
wrong and then observed frankly: ‘‘Well, I really was an ass”.
Whereas if any one else told him he had been an ass he wouldn’t
much care for it.

I am therefore a little doubtful of my own critical daring.
Not that I am accusing anyone of being or having been an ass,
or that I have made odious comparisons with the imputation
that other people do it so much better. If anyone has received
that impression then let me apologize at once ; that was far from

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my intention. The English were happy on their island before I
arrived, and I am not immodest enough to suppose that they
would feel any loss if I departed, which, incidentally, I have no
intention of doing — except in the way of all flesh. However, I
feel that it is not only a man’s right, but even his duty, to give
advice to those around him, particularly to his friends, when he
feels that he has anything of value to say. In my case the point
of departure for any criticism is my conviction that this is the
finest country in the world, and that there is no other at the
same advanced stage of development. I feel proud to account
myself by choice and adoption a member of such a community.

This is the true spirit of criticism as a duty, and not as an
expression of dissatisfaction. Criticism is the application of
knowledge and experience. I am well aware that limited men-
talities are quick to retort to the foreign critic : “Nobody asked
you to come here. If you don’t like it go back to where you
came from.” But I do like it, though that doesn’t mean to say
that even in the most favoured country there is nothing that
could be improved. I have therefore refused to let myself be
silenced by the usual smug phrase: “In this country we . .

It is unworthy of the English character anyway. It means more
or less: “You Ashanti nigger, yesterday you were up a tree
dropping coconuts. Shut up.” No, there are some things which
still persist in this country despite the fact that they are not on a
level with the national genius. I have felt that to point out one
or two is a good deed — even for a foreigner, provided the spirit
of the criticism is constructive and the intention helpful.

CHAPTER XX

AND FINALLY THE ENGLISHMAN

It is obviously a comparatively easy matter to rule over
masses of people who show no very great interest in questions
of the day. The masses of the people in England pay compara-
tively little attention to things they cannot determine them-
selves, and they are prepared to leave them in the hands of the
authorities with some confidence. Even the greatest cataclysm
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in human history seems to have impressed its significance on
relatively few people. They are unwilling to interfere in matters
which seem outside their province. A shrug of the shoulders
and a brief “It’s not my job” is the usual reaction. They rely
on the specialists and the experts to attend to the matter — and^
I must say, it works quite well that way.

There are few countries in which authority, even authori-
tarianism, plays such a role as in this country, though it is a
voluntarily accepted authority and not one imposed by force
from above, and that makes all the difference. It is incumbent
on a well-bred man to accept much of what is set before him
without complaint. What he doesn’t know about doesn’t
trouble him unduly, and unfortunately with an average educa-
tion there is so little he does know. With such a widespread lack
of interest it is easy to discipline a people. At the same time it
ensures peace of mind and almost happiness. Leisure can then
be devoted to the pleasures of life, and society is little disturbed
by violent differences of opinion. Even fundamental problems
of social existence can count on very little public attention, but
the fate of a half-starved cat or a badly treated dog can raise a
storm of feeling. That is quite touching, but at the same time
it gives rise to some misgiving.

The Englishman is not a great reader. His newspapers are
printed in enormous editions daily and give him mformation
painlessly by text and by pictures. Newspapers with an intel-
lectual appeal, the small band headed by The Times ^ account
for only a very small proportion of the huge volume of journal-
istic production. And even the intellectual usually limits his
interest in questions of the day to his week-end reading, to the
Sunday newspapers, the weeklies, the reviews and the monthlies.

In the European-continental sense the school aims at awak-
ening the interest of the pupil in historical and natural happen-
ings — at giving, so to speak, a typical cross-cut of human ^ow-
ledge, and enlarging the horizon. Its task is thus diffused rather
than concentrated. I have wondered whether the lack of school-
ing in England has a deleterious effect on life in general, but I
have come to the conclusion that generally speaking it does not.
In any case, appearances are often deceptive here too. The
Englishman seems to have less desire to communicate with his

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fellows than is the case with the Continent example of homo
sapiens. He can sit in company for hours without saying a word,
and even without listening to what other people are saying. In
fact, he can be a bit of a bore. Out of politeness he is always
prepared to enter into a discussion, apparently with some eager-
ness, concerning the weather. Once this meteorological crust has
been broken it is often possible to discover his opinions con-
cerning other and less important matters. And that, very often,
is the time for the more loquacious foreigner to be astonished to
discover so much sound common sense. Even the simple and
comparatively uneducated Englishman is usually capable of
pronouncing a very sound judgment. Very often an intellect
unburdened by detailed knowledge can get down to the essence
of a question with a great deal more certainty than an intellect
inhibited by greater learning and wider reading. I have often
been astonished at the unprejudiced directness of thought and
judgment I have met with amongst ordinary Englishmen.

However, even in the comparatively short time I have spent
in this country — twelve years now — there has been a marked
change in the general attitude towards human affairs, and there
is already much less indifference to the problems of the day.
The strengthening of the labour movement has inevitably re-
sulted in an increased urge to knowledge and education, whilst
the foreign invasion has done something to broaden the
islanders’ mentality. After all, the sum total of the refugee
flood together with the hundreds of thousands of troops from
all over the world represented a great lump which did a good
deal of leavening.

I hope it will not be thought that I attach an exaggerated
importance to formal education. This is not the case, in fact I
very much doubt whether in the last resort plain common sense
is not better than a ‘‘sophisticated” semi-education. Again I
trust that I have not given the impression that I regard the
Englishman as uneducated. Nothing of the sort. I would even
say decidedly that the intellectual upper stratum of this country
is better educated than any corresponding strata anywhere.
England is not only the country in which a knowledge of the
classics is held in higher respect than anywhere else in the
world.

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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

I don’t know whether the fact has any relation to the English
system of education, but I have generally found that English-
men are not particularly enthusiastic about their work, and
that their enthusiasm is reserved for their hobbies, which, inci-
dentally, are not exhausted by fretwork and jig-saw puzzles.
The amount of knowledge, experience and research which can
be found again and again in unexpected quarters in this
country is a constant source of astonishment, and this is largely
due to the hobby, to the way in which the Englishman spends
his leisure hours. Without hope of public recognition or
material success really great performances are often achieved
in this way. I make bold to say that there is not a field of
human thought and activity which has not valuable representa-
tives in this country. The English genius has a habit of blooming
discreetly out of the great white light of publicity. It would be
a banality to enumerate the names of all the great heroes of the
intellect who were bom on this island, but one thing is quite
certain to me, and that is that their hobby, their personal bent,
was very often the main incentive to their great achievements.
English science is more often of the amateur — in the true sense —
than the convulsive pedantic and philistine apparatus of science
that often oppresses the spirit on the Continent. The most valu-
able characteristic of English science is in my opinion its
refreshing lack of prejudices.

This country has produced peak achievements which have
remained signal and decisive for the rest of the civilized world.
I certainly have no intention of writing a history of English
culture, but one feature strikes me forcibly. The intellectual
heroes of this country have so often spoken with a voice which
has been heard only on the Continent where their great ideas
have been taken up eagerly, whilst in their own country they
met with a general lack of interest. It was the subsequent
echoes from the Continent which then drew the attention of
the British public to the fact that heroes of the mind dwelt in
their midst. This was true of Newton and Purcell, of Davies,
Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, Joule, William Morris, Craig,
Bernard Shaw and many others. Owing to the lack of local
interest the further development of the great work of such
men has then all too often been left to other peoples, to

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Janos, The Stony of a Doctor

return often in a digested form, and to be accepted and even
popularized.

I suppose that the period of English history which has coin-
cided with my presence in this country was more full of tre-
mendous happenings than any other similar period. Our first
great experience was the jubilee celebrations of King George V’s
reign. London went gay and the enthusiasm of its demonstra-
tions of loyalty knew no bounds. I don’t know how much was
drunk in those three days during which the town never slept
because one half of its inhabitants were on the streets day and
night celebrating, whilst the other half was unable to sleep for
the noise of the merriment. One would hardly credit the Eng-
lish people with the ability they possess of letting themselves go.
They seem to save it up for special occasions and then let fly
altogether. And when they do there is very little left of their
renowned reserve.

We found ourselves carried away with it all, and we cheered,
we cheered with the rest. In fact, I doubt if anybody cheered
more. The demonstrations of uproarious loyalty were too com-
pelling not to sweep us along with them. I have taken part in
many jolly and boisterous celebrations on the Continent, but
compared with the Jubilee a Cologne Fasching is a day of
mourning. The same sort of thing happened on a smaller scale
when the late Duke of Kent married his Marina, and on an
even greater scale, if, indeed, that were at all possible, at the
coronation of George VI.

And there were occasions when we saw the people of this
country disturbed and unhappy. The last illness and death of
King George V was one. The mourning was sincere and wide-
spread. And soon after that came the embarrassing affair of the
succession. The few had known for some time that the Heir Ap-
parent was involved in a love affair of which the ruling classes
disapproved, and when the question of the succession arose the
matter became public and developed into a crisis. Opinions were
divided. The masses of the people have a deep understanding for
affairs of the heart. But the abdication was inevitable. When
the Duke of Windsor went he took with him the sympathy of the
people, who, although they approved of the solution, retained
kindly feelings for one they knew better as Edward, Prince of
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Wales. The last feelings of discomfort were swallowed up for
good in the joyful celebration of the coronation of George VI.

Having witnessed the deep emotional participation of the
people in these events of public importance, I was astounded at
the calmness with which they took the outbreak of war. Their
attitude seemed almost disinterested. The special editions of
the newspapers as the crisis came to a head caused hardly more
than a ripple over the surface of London life, and everybody
went about his business as usual. War brings disagreeable things
in its train : losses and a limitation of freedom. Depression is
something the Englishman suffers unwillingly. His interest can
be aroused for the happy and amusing things of life, but not to
the same extent for less pleasant affairs, and right throughout
the war, despite the deadly danger which threatened, despite
conscription, rationing, points and coupons, I never saw such
interest again. The majority of the people, particularly in the
rural areas, went on living as though the war had little to do
with them. When the newspapers appeared announcing the
overthrow of Mussolini I happened to be in a railway carriage
with eight other people. I was the only one who took the
trouble to get up and buy a paper. To this day I ask myself
whether I was not guilty of bad manners in allowing my
curiosity to disturb the peace of my fellow-passengers.

During my stay in England I have found many loyal friends.
Unlike most other countries, you find more friendship and sym-
pathy here when you are in trouble than when things are going
well. The Englishman has a tendency to masochism — ^which is
much better than the obvious tendency of certain other peoples
to sadism — and he is extraordinarily helpful. But he is most
helpful when his protege is in difficulties. Refugees who fled to
this country can tell tales of almost fabulous generosity and
warm-heartedness, and the doers of those good deeds expected
no return, not even thanks. But afterwards there is often a cool-
ing off wlxen the proteges no longer need help and have found
their feet again. I think the intense love of children and animals
met with in this country comes from a similar source. It is a
deep desire to help the helpless. On the other hand, the Eng-
lishman is capable of being very hard towards those who are
well able to look after themselves.

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

Now that the war is over the English people will be faced
with many difficult problems, and not the least of them is how
the returned soldier and the girls from the services are going to
settle down. For one thing, they are bound to put higher de-
mands on life than they did before, and this is likely to be still
more so in the case of the girls. I think the organization of the
women’s services was a most remarkable performance. Out of
nothing, without a historical parallel and without traditions, a
machine was created which functioned smoothly and with
extraordinary efficiency. It was altogether a new chapter in
history, and its consequences are likely to be immeasurable. One
half of humanity was given the chance for the first time of using
potential energy which had lain dormant. Totalitarian war was
certainly an evil thing, but it filled many empty existences with
unimagined richness. It will not be possible to turn back the
wheel. These girls have learnt a tremendous amount: dis-
cipline, cleanliness, hygiene, mechanics, improvisation and
general knowledge far beyond their previous horizon. All their
practical abilities have been developed until there are few situa-
tions with which they cannot cope. Of course, the eternal
feminine will remain, and it will complement the new man
returning from the wars.

It is doubtful whether the old family life which revolved
around the home, the fireside, the kitchen, and the traditional
Sunday dinner will return in quite the same guise. We must
expect that central heating, the restaurant, the tin-box kitchen-
ette, the cinema, the wireless and the motor-car will exercise
increasingly powerful influence. A demand for freedom almost
to excess is more likely than a return to the old domestic ties.
And even when the first storm has passed, and the old desire for
the self-contained domestic menage returns, we must expect it to
be a rather different thing than the one we knew — ^something
more akin to the speed and mechanization of this age. Perhaps
I shall regret it, but I am an old man now and most of my life
is spent in memories. The young people will make their own
lives in accordance with the character of the age in which they
are living and they will be happy, and that is the great thing.

The returning men will not have to re-adapt themselves so
fundamentally as their women comrades, but their demands on
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life will also have increased, and many of them will emigrate
when they find that these increased demands cannot be met in
the old country. They have learnt something of the world out-
side England. Englishmen have always gone all over the world.
It is a tradition to which England owes her world position.
Adventure lies in the English blood. The imagination of the
Englishman does not express itself so much in art or in dreams,
as in going out into the world to meet new situations and master
them, and the greater the difficulties met with the firmer the
determination to win through. From Sir Walter Raleigh to
Cecil Rhodes and the modern Commando there are innumer-
able examples of this urge in British history. Security and indo-
lence are not characteristics of the Englishman. The spice of
danger means something to him, and if there is none in his life
he seeks it in his sports or elsewhere.

The Englishman with his reputation for unromantic coolness
is in reality a romantic and sentimental being. He can be
moved more easily by small and unimportant matters than any-
one else. In love he is shy and rather helpless towards the more
calculating woman. She is more pretentious than he is. It is
she who demands security. And socially she is more ambitious
than he is. It is she whose keen eye is on the next rung in the
social ladder. In public life, where she is the equal partner of
the man, she leads her own life, and very often her opinions are
diametrically opposed to those of the man. In public speaking
she is quite as good as he is. In welfare matters it is she who
takes the lead. In administrative affairs she is thoroughly at
home, and she chairs her meetings with great tact and natural
discretion.

The Englishman has the reputation of being sparing with his
words, but the living word is nowhere more highly thought of
than in England. To be a good talker in England means a
career. The oratorical form is at least as important as the con-
tent. Language for the Englishman is more an aesthetic than
an intellectual pleasure, and that is perhaps why his poetry is
so great, and why its reputation stands so high. The language
of the Bible speaks directly to him, and it has done much to
form his language. But humour he loves too, and a speech,
even about the bitterest and most serious matters, must always

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

have its nuggets of wit and humour if it is to be wholly success-
ful. Not a little of Winston ChurchilFs great oratorical success
is due to this characteristic. Laughter, in fact, is about the only
way in which the Englishman expresses his feelings openly. A
smiling face is half the battle in England, and even the practical
joker can reckon on a certain tolerance for his odious pranks.

Part of this attitude, I feel, is due to the fact that nothing
cloaks the feelings better than a humorous reaction, and in
England feelings are rarely expressed. It is not good form.
Things that move a man have to be kept to himself. The
troubles and trials of life are a man’s own affairs ; he is not sup-
posed to burden others with them. But happiness, that can be
shared. The Englishman is not as solemn as many of his neigh-
bours think him; he is always to be had for fun and amuse-
ment, though his demands are often very unsophisticated, even
childish. On the whole the English are simple souls, and be-
cause of that practical joking is more frequent and more robust
here than elsewhere, but vulgarity is not part of their character.

Yes, these English have many and admirable human traits,
but there is one which is not characteristic of them : they seem
to have no need for beauty as such. Things are terribly prac-
tical in England. They may even be beautiful after that, but
they are practical first. Their houses, their public places, their
collections, their architecture, their interiors, their clothes,
decorations, table arrangements and their meals — ^undoubtedly
there is a real style which unites them all, but they are more
or less practical and comfortable, and "I’art pour TArt” is an
exile.

I do not say this with a light heart, and I have no doubt that
many will contradict me. I am not ignoring the existence of
Ruskin, of whom Carlyle declared that he had founded ^‘a new
renaissance”. His influence on the sesthetics of every-day life
was very great, not only in this country, but on the Continent
too. Nor do I forget William Morris, tlxe pioneer of ^'decora-
tion as a career”. William Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and
their followers did much to raise the standards of the decorative
art. The influence of William Morris abroad was even greater
than that of Ruskin ; he put, as has been said, ‘"an ineffaceable
stamp on Victorian ornament”. But “abroad” is here the
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operative word. There are exclusive social circles in this country
into which his influence seems never to have penetrated. No, I
am afraid that despite the influence of these artists and others
like them, if the world consisted only of Englishmen the domestic
art of living, interior decoration and so on would be on an even
lower level than they already are.

Every Mayfair house seems to have the same structure as
demonstrated in so many hundreds of bomb sites. You know
the lay-out of the house before you enter it, so that once inside
you know your way about, which is certainly convenient. Each
laouse, of course, contains valuable things, for riches create
values quite irrespective of whether the valuables fit into their
surroundings or not. Perhaps the items are chronologically
arranged just as the ancestors of the occupiers acquired them.
Thus you may see a Titian hanging next to a Velasquez or a
Duerer or an aquarelle by the Venetian Salviati. The big private
galleries, for instance, are very often not arranged by schools, or
historical value or favourable lighting conditions, but just in
chronological order according to the date of purchase. I have
had an opportunity of seeing many of the important private
galleries here, and I don’t think there is another country in tlie
world where so many art treasures have been accumulated. For
centuries it belonged to the proper education of the aristocracy
to make the grand tour of the Continent. Almost all of them
came back loaded with treasures. It is quite understandable
that young people, often without much feeling or understanding
for art, occasionally parted with their good guineas for copies
and fakes, which were then religiously catalogued as authentic,
and in consequence there is much of doubtful value in these
great collections, but they also include many masterpieces of
the highest artistic value.

If a census of the objets d^art in private possession in this
country were ever taken there would be some big surprises :
there are masterpieces hung away in odd corners, works of
great beauty and significance lost to the connoisseur for the
time being, and often surrounded with inferior rubbish. For
the English owners of such works their primary value is senti-
mental rather than artistic. I can remember on one occasion
having seen a remarkably fine still-life by Rubens hanging in

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

the kitchen of a big country^ house, in the place it had probably
occupied for two or three centuries, as thoroughly smoked as
any York ham. In such questions tradition in England plays a
much greater role than any aesthetic and artistic considerations.

Piety and tradition are noble things in themselves, but they
are often the enemies of beauty. The industrial and commercial
advance which coincided with the Victorian era and accumu-
lated such great material riches left behind a tradition of almost
sheer horror in matters of beauty, style and taste. It may last
centuries before the finaj traces of this era have been eradicated.
To-day we are living in a better artistic era, and perhaps when
the ravages of war have been made good a more subtle taste
will develop. On the whole the English are not an artistic
people. I do not mean that they have no eye for beauty ; they
have, and they appreciate it as they appreciate good French
food, but neither the one nor the other is a necessity of life for
tliem. Much has certainly been done for art in this country,
and it has a tradition of great patrons which can compare
favourably with that of any other country, but I have the feeling
that it was often done to be in the fashion, because it was an
obligation of rank, rather than from any authentic inner urge.

There are many and varied ex:amples of great artistic achieve-
ments in this country which seem to argue against my view-
point, and, of course, it is fortunately true that artistic feeling
is not the monopoly of any country or any people, but there are
degrees, and in this country art was always the preserve of the
few; the great masses of the people have remained indifferent.
For instance, although the development of music has received
great encouragement in this country, from Handel, Haydn,
Beethoven and Weber to Dvorak and the moderns, and despite
its great wealth there is still no permanent opera anywhere.
Comparatively few towns have even an orchestra of their own.
On the other hand, English choir music is supreme. I am happy
to observe that things are improving, though. I remember that
twelve years ago the great Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
played in the Queen’s Hall, not a large haU, and the house was
by no means full. And as for the concerts the Prague Phil-
harmonic Orchestra gave here, well, the tickets were a drug on
the market. To-day, thanks primarily to the tireless activities
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of Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Henry Wood, Malcolm Sargent
and Harold Holt, things are very different. Interest for music
in this country has greatly increased. The B.B.C. has done
much in this respect, and its very fine Symphony Orchestra,
under its conductor Sir Adrian Boult, need fear comparison with
none of the great continental or American orchestras. It has
done a lot to popularize more serious music.

Modern British composers have been of considerable sig-
nificance for the development of music. Unfortunately I never
had the opportunity of knowing Sir Edward Elgar, but Sir
Thomas Beecham, Dame Ethel Smythe and William Walton I
am proud to count amongst my friends. Dame Ethel Smythe
was one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. The
modesty and the humour with which she has described her life
for us do not conceal her extraordinary personality. Her com-
positions for church and choir music and her opera “^^The
Wreckers’’ are essentially English in character and tradition.
^^The Wreckers” in particular is great in style and performance,
and its reputation will grow. I am not an expert critic, but I
know from Bruno Walter how highly he rates it. He considers
that she was one of the leading composers of our age, and during
his Munich period he produced and conducted “The Wreckers”.
Ethel Smythe was not only a great composer, she was a great
woman, and she fought vigorously with Mrs. Pankhurst for the
franchise for women. Something of her great fighting spirit is
in her music. In her last years she suffered the same tragic fate
as Beethoven, and she could no longer hear her own music.

William Walton is another English composer who, in my
opinion at least, is amongst the leading composers of our day,
an authentic musician and a real contemporary spirit who re-
flects the age in his richly talented work. What a pity, I must
say it again, that this country has no permanent opera! It
means that the potential talents and energies of many of Eng-
land’s musicians, singers and dancers are not given a fair chance
of development. Musical training finds only a limited field for
its expression. The loss to British music is difficult to estimate.

The English theatre has a proud tradition, but in our own
day it is greatly hampered by the prevailing commercial out-
look. Artistic and literary values are less important than box-

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office returns, and in consequence what should be the chief aim
of the theatre, the artistic and dramatic education of the people,
suffers greatly. Sensation is the effect chiefly aimed at. Sensa-
tion, of course, can sometimes be achieved with artistic means,
but more often than not the means used are very far from
artistic. The great thing is always that the production should
show a profit and therefore, quite literally, the costs of produc-
tion must be kept low. All too often that means cheap in every
sense of the word. The soul (if soul is the word) of the theatre is
therefore no longer the artistic director, but the entrepreneur,
the man who puts up the money and wants tangible financial
results. Thus there is little margin for experiment. Artistic
enthusiasm and ambition must give way to the stern dictation
of the box-office. Capital is available for investment in pro-
ductions which promise financial success — ^which doesn’t mean
that the investors never miscalculate and lose their money.
After that comes the popular name, the leading actor or
actress who will prove a box-office attraction. And finally
comes the scenery, costumes, etc., and, generally speaking, as
little as possible is spent on these items.

Under such circumstances it is perhaps possible to maintain
the artistic level of a theatre like the English, but hardly to
develop it to greater heights. And, in fact, the refreshing breeze
of new innovations and departures has not disturbed the surface
of English theatre life much, and when it has it has usually come
from abroad. In this respect my good friend G. B. Cochran has
done much. He is a worthy upholder of the old English theatri-
cal tradition, and at the same time he is a friend of the European
stage in its widest sense. For him art is the first and last word
in the theatre, and for this reason, despite his great successes and
his long career, C. B. Cochran has never made any money. As
things are, it redounds to Iris credit.

I consider Cochran one of the greatest living theatre men.
He started his theatrical career as an actor, and he knows the
stage, its actors and its public as intimately as any man ever
did. His experience is unique, and throughout it all he has
never been prepared to compromise at the expense of art. At
times his convictions have cost him a pretty penny, but at least
he has the satisfaction of knowing that his sacrifices were made
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in a good cause, and not a lost cause by any means. That a
man of modest means should be able to point to so many
honours showered upon him is perhaps more than the knowledge
of a big balance at the bank, but still I think it a pity that
idealistic and materialistic success should not be better balanced
in this world.

Cochran has trained two generations of actors. It was he who
brought the great teachers of the Continent to this country,
together with a good sprinkling of European dramatic and
literary values. At the same time he has expended his own
genius with a lavish hand as producer, teacher, discoverer of
talent and educator of the public taste. And there are very few
men in this country who have done more for charitable causes
than Cochran. His performances for such causes must have
brought in enormous sums throughout his long and rich life.
He is tremendously popular amongst those who know him, and
that is due primarily, I feel, to his great goodness of heart,
which determines all he thinks and all he does. I have always
envied him the invariably friendly and engaging manner he
has with everyone with whom he comes in contact.

I have spoken of what strikes me as a lack of aesthetic demands
in the life of the average Englishman ; it is certainly so where
his cooking is concerned. On the whole English cooking lacks
the love without which no cooking can ever be a work of art.
For the Englishman eating is primarily a question of satisfying
a natural appetite, and provided it is satisfied he is not much
interested in how, and he is almost indifierent to variety. In
food, as in almost all other things, it is characteristic of the
Englishman that he will not deliberately deny himself anything,
but if necessary he can do without almost anything. If he is
able to obtain things with ease and comfort, then nothing is too
good for him, and m consequence he is certainly a welcome
guest on the Continent, but he does not depend on good food
well prepared to the same extent as the continental does. He
is prepared to put up, he does put up, with the most primitive
preparation of his food. Owing to his indifference, his wife, his
clubs and pubs, his hotels and his eating-places generally have
no incentive to produce anything beyond the merely nutritious.
The Englishman neither greatly appreciates fine food which has

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Janos The Story of a Doctor

been prepared with love and care nor does he complain bitterly
of food which has not received the care it deserves.

I think it must be due to the climate that the Englishman
takes his fat requirements from the most indigestible varieties
available. Physiologically the digestibility of fat for the human
body is related to the temperature at which the fat congeals,
and the order of desirability is : olive oil, cream, butter, mar-
garine, goose, pork, mutton and beef fat. For climatic or con-
stitutional reasons, the Englishman prefers mutton and beef
fat, both of which dissolve only slowly, and this preference gives
English cooking its peculiar character. The characteristic smell
of the Spanish kitchen is that of burned olive oil (aceto) — ^it can
make a cruise on a Spanish ship in hot weather almost in-
tolerable — and the characteristic smell of the English kitchen
is that of overheated mutton fat.

The Englishman often takes in his supply of carbohydrates
first thing in the morning with his porridge. Its consistency and
general character is such that on the Continent, and particularly
in France and Austria, it would be drought more suitable for
the bill-poster’s can. The Englishman seems to have a high
requirement of sugar, and this — in normal times — ^is satisfied
chiefly by the consumption of chocolate in any form, whilst
children and sportsmen go in for candies and toffee. The con-
sumption of bread is not large. Bread is merely the basis for
butter — or, God help us, margarine in these days of rationing.
And even then the bread is made of denaturized white flour.
What is called ‘‘black bread” is just not eaten by English
people, and brown or wholemeal bread is not popular. There
seems to be no dextrine requirements at all in this country, and,
in normal times at least, the crust is carefully removed from
sandwiches. Albumen requirements are met by the consumption
of meat, fish and cheese. The quality of the beef in England is
magnificent, and a sirloin would not disgrace the royal coat of
arms. The same is true of the mutton and lamb, whilst the
traditional mint sauce is a rare touch of genius. But beef and
mutton, boiled, roasted and in pies, more or less sums up
England’s limited variations on the grand theme of cookery. In
private households, where the housewife attends to the cooking
herself and there is some love and care involved, English

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cookery celebrates its modest triumphs. It is there, too, that
the pie is enjoyable. In most restaurants it suggests too strongly
a review of the previous week.

English cookery, when it is kept simple and the cook has no
pretensions to sophistication, is good enough, but woe betide the
guest when the English cook begins to titivate his products. It
is then almost as though he were moved by some secret urge to
see how best he can ruin good material. For a simple person of
normal taste and requirements it is difficult to see how lemonade
made with cold water, sugar and the juice of lemons — obviously
my mind is taking me far back — can be spoiled, but it can, and
in England it is — or was. All you need do is to cook it with the
lemon peel and you have a bitter brew to taste with a shock of
disappointment.

Someone once asked why the Englishman does not drink
coffee. Mark Twain supplied the answer : 'Tf you’d ever tasted
coffee in England you’d know”. And with that there’s little
more to be said. But tea! That’s quite another matter, and
there seems to exist a genius loci which would make a journey to
England worth while purely for the pleasure of drinking tea.
The climate and the water are more than friendly to the
delicate leaf ; they seem to enhance its inherent nobility.

It is something of a riddle to me, with my interest in the
physiology of nutrition, how it comes about that three of the
most important raw materials for the continental kitchen, with
all its noble arts, seem hardly to exist in this country. I refer to
the pig in the animal world, the goose amongst the feathered
tribe, and the carp amongst the fishes. The continental kitchen
is almost unthinkable without this marvellous trio. Game such
as venison and hare is also in no great favour here, whilst
smoking as a means of preparing food is much neglected, and
the same is more or less true of veal. I don’t know whether this
neglect comes from the indifference of the Englishman to
variety in his food, but in any case it is a pity that these
highly nutritious and at the same time delicious dishes find
little or no place on the English menu. Perhaps, in part due
to the factors I have previously mentioned as broadening the
Englishman’s outlook, and perhaps also as a result of the
increased agricultural drive which is now being made, things

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

will improve in this respect as they are improving in many
others.

At present, however, there can be little doubt that the English
people feed both badly and wrongly, and I am not referring to
anything which is due to war and post-war shortages. The
whole problem of national nutrition needs a fundamental
review. There are other things closely connected with this
problem — ^for instance, the high consumption of alcohol, the
declining birth rate and a certain sexual indifference. Alcohol
is the most highly combustible fuel. It is easily, rapidly and
fully consumed by the human organism, and it tends to save the
albumen of the body. However, it is uneconomic as a foodstuff,
and under certain circumstances it can have deleterious effects.
Apart from the United States, there is no country in the world
which has a higher consumption of alcohol than Great Britain,
where it is, in fact, dangerously high. Better feeding and, above
all, better kitchen preparation would go a long way towards
reducing this foolish abuse of a valuable aid to living.

The refugee domestic workers have more or less had to adapt
themselves to circumstances, but I have a feeling that the re-
markably fine cooks from Prague and Vienna who have come
over here in quite considerable numbers have done something
to leaven the lump — and it was very lumpy. In any case, it is
a good sign that these cooks are appreciated and keenly sought
after. Not all professional cooks are good cooks. Like so many
other honourable professions, cookery has many practitioners
who go about their business purely as a business, as a means of
livelihood and nothing else. Once I went for a long country
walk with the famous Swiss philosopher Forel, and we turned
into a wayside inn for lunch. When the host appeared to know
our pleasure Forel declared that for his part a simple scrambled-
egg dish was all he required, but he must insist that it be made
with fresh eggs, a little butter and a pinch of salt, and — ^and
here the philosopher raised a minatory finger — ^with the most
important ingredient of all, a little loving care.

Yes, that is no exaggeration, the simplest dish must be made
with love if it is to be really good. Only a cook by choice and
instinct, a cook who cooks with love, can be a really good cook.
A cook must have an altruistic nature, for he must take a joy
448

The Theatre, Art, Music and England

in sacrificing himself and his efforts for the pleasure of others,
and his chief reward must lie not in his pay-packet if he is a pro-
fessional cook, but in just that pleasure of others, for without
that it will be no pleasure. I will make so bold as to say that
the artistic fantasy of a people can be judged by its cooking.
Compare, for instance, Viennese cookery with its Berlin coun-
terpart — and when you have made the comparison you will
know the difference between the Austrian and the Prussian;
two fundamentally different natures which repel more than
they attract each other, and which, even in the best case, find
it difficult to get along together. A man of understanding in
these matters might write a whole handbook of racial psychology
with a table of national affinities and discordances — all on the
basis of the art of cookery in its various national manifestations,

I have heard it suggested that there is a deep political inten-
tion which is opposed to making the British Isles too popular
and which prefers a certain isolation. If one accepts this sug-
gestion, then the state of the island’s hotel and restaurant in-
dustry becomes understandable at once, but not otherwise. This
important industry which brings so much grist to the financial
mill of other nations is in a deplorably primitive condition in
this country. Some part of the cause may lie in the British
system of licensing, which does much to exclude the healthy
factor of competition. Another and even more important part
may be the utter lack of any standard required by the majority
of the guests. Whatever the reason, the average British hotel,
particularly in the smaller towns, is not an inviting institution.

Small wonder therefore that this beautiful country is so little
known on the Continent and that it is not the Mecca of foreign
holiday-makers it ought to be. This certainly does not apply to
foreign aristocrats, who, thanks to their relations with their
English cousins, have every opportunity of making the acquaint-
ance of the country from its best angle, on the English and
Scottish estates, in the castles and town and country houses.
Such foreigners then often seek to introduce the agreeable and
luxurious life they have met with here in their own countries,
but this refers to the exceptional few only. The ordinary mortal,
whether Englishman or foreigner, can look through the gates
into the great park, but that is all. The ordinary tourist can do

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

little more than walk along the roads between walls and hedges,
though on certain days and for an expenditure of sixpence as
entrance fee* he will be permitted to look over the grounds. I
know that this will seem exaggerated to the native, for he knows
his way about better, but to the innocent foreign tourist it is
precisely the impression he receives of this country’s hospitality.

In other countries the national life of the people is lived
largely in public, in the theatres, the cafes, the streets and other
open places. In England it takes place largely behind closed
doors through which the interested eye of the visitor cannot
penetrate. Of course, if the stranger is Ixere long enough he will
make friends, and then many of the doors will be opened to him
with great courtesy and hospitality to permit a view of domestic
felicity which is quite impressive. The world with all its noise
and bustle, its discomforts and its disagreeable phenomena, is
on the other side, and no objectionable noise, no disturbing hub-
bub and, above all, no deplorable ideas have entry. It is here
that the real characteristics and traditions of English life are
upheld and cherished. But the average visitor, anxious to spend
his hard-earned money on a good holiday, can’t stay as long as
that.

England is more a mosaic of individual family units than in
any other country. Made up in that way it is a more integral
whole, and it is held together by a supreme instinct of national
solidarity. An Englishman may profess what views he likes ; he
may belong to any party, whether Labour, Liberal or Con-
servative, but when ‘'God Save the King” is played — and it is
played often — ^he takes off his hat or cap, and he stands up with
the rest. It is this unity, this feeling of national solidarity, which
is the root of England’s strength, the secret of her invincibility.
Patriotism is drawn from the ground on which the Englishman
stands. It is stronger than mother’s milk. Whoever is born here
and grows up here, may his parents come from where they list,
comes like Antaeus to the world. He is "British by Birth” and
he takes his strength from the island earth.

On the other hand, even the oldest foreign resident remains
a stranger all his days. His work will be appreciated if it is
good, but his "country of origin” must appear by law on his
business notepaper. And yet this people is not a racial whole.
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The Theatre^ Art^ Music and England

It is made up of many different elements into a homogeneous,
an indivisible whole, even when the elements which go to its
make-up are still discernible. Its individual citizens are natur-
ally of many and varied characters and they have the most
divergent characteristics, but they hold together as an indi-
visible body and subordinate themselves willingly — ^no, not by
an act of will, but unconsciously and by instinct to the whole.
Absolute solidarity is the limit of their freedom and their inde-
pendence. That is why the principle of Democracy is such a
success here. The Englishman can afford it — within the limits
of a still greater principle, the principle of national solidarity.
There are many ways in this country, but they all lead to the
same end. Each man pays his tribute to the good of the whole,
and without compulsion. Typical for the essence of English
public life is that institution known as '‘His Majesty’s Opposi-
tion”. Its leader even receives a salary from the Growm. Within
the limits of this great principle of national solidarity all and
any criticism is permissible.

It is extremely rare that anyone takes it into his head to trans-
gress these limits, and therefore liberty in this country has the
appearance of being without limits. In England Democracy is
the form of political governance. It has worked for centuries,
and its methods are old and tried. It is a national institution.
But when Democracy is tried elsewhere with ineffective means
and in an unsuitable environment the institution becomes a
caricature. Political democracy is therefore a dangerous export
article. A slavish imitation of English methods in a country
which is not sufficiently mature to have developed them out of
its own way of life can, and often does, lead to catastrophe.

The Englishman is this, the Englishman is that, the English-
man is the other — enough of individual analysis of national
characteristics. So many have tried it already, and so few, if
any, have altogether succeeded, so I shall have fared no better.
In any case, the great thing is the whole, not the individual
parts. Whatever one might think about the individual work-
man, the whole body of workmen produce a Rolls-Royce. The
soldier, the officer, their merits, their demerits, their training,
the army organization, its material — all these separate factors
can provoke contradictory judgments ; but in the end the Eng-

451

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

lishman wins liis wars. His industry, his ability, his judgment,
his every attribute and characteristic, can be the subject of
dispute, but he has come nearer to leading the world than any
other man. How he has done it no one knows, and certainly not
himself, but perhaps that is because he never bothers his head
about it and leaves the analysis to others. For the Englishman
there is England and there always will be, England with all her
faults and failings, and all her truly lovable qualities and all her
real greatness. And as one not an Englishman, but with the
privilege of living in this England, I am glad of it.

452

APPENDIX

A DOCTOR’S DIALOGUES

It is not an easy matter to lay down any definite rules of
life. For one thing, the result might be too simple and verge on
quackery, or on the other hand it might turn out to be too
‘‘scientific”, a sort of medical-mystical dialectic, pretentious and
ununderstandabie for the people concerned. However, in view
of my long experience, stretching over almost half a century as
a practising doctor, and after long consideration, I have de-
cided to take the advice of my friends and run the risks involved
in setting down in print advice given from time to time to my
patients — advice which I now consider might be of general
interest and benefit. The doctor’s practice is the application of
medical science to ordinary everyday life. The two tilings
affect each other mutually and beneficially. I know the require-
ments of patients, and my scientific research work has invariably
been based on or initiated by their needs and by my close
relation with them.

Ail my medical life I have tried to steer clear of cut-and>dried
school wisdom, prejudice and medical arrogance. For one
thing, I have never treated my patients as though they were
awkward school children. I have never assumed an air of
superior wisdom and treated them as many people do treat
children: “You don’t understand that; you’re too young”. I
like to make things as plain as I can to my patients and to dis-
cuss with them not only their particular sickness, but my par-
ticular treatment of it, and I have never hesitated to let them
know the limits of my knowledge and my ability to assist them.
As I have already indicated in the body of this book, I am abso-
lutely opposed to the mediaeval tradition of secrecy and mysti-
fication in medical affairs. Medical science and its application
must be kept as generally understandable as the nature of the
case permits, and it should not be degraded to the level of a
secret science with all its mumbo-jumbo. My personal ambition
never went farther than to be a good general practitioner, at
home on all fields of medical practice. I have always loved my
work, and served humanity as best I could.

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Janos, The Story of a Doctor

I have practised in many countries and got to know all sorts
of people, including colleagues from all parts of the world. In
my experience there is no very fundamental difference between
sick people of one race or nation and those of another. All of
them groan when they are in great pain, and all of them smile
when things are going well. There are, of course, very great
differences between one patient and another, but very rarely
are these differences to be explained by racial or national char-
acteristics. Everyone loves life, and no one likes to die. A
banality? Perhaps, but it is the fundamental basis of all medical
practice. What every patients wants in the last resort is that his
doctor shall help him to a life free of physical suffering and ail-
ments, and give him a sound hope that the inevitable end will
be postponed as long as possible.

Lots of philosophers and other people have cudgelled their
brains to discover a satisfactory explanation of the purpose of
life. For my part I agree with Goethe that the practical solution
is that life is there to be lived. The criterion of a healthy human
being is his joy of life. Our instinct for life, for which there is no
satisfkctory motivation, keeps us alive, and that instinct, when
healthy, is uncompromising; whatever may fall to our lot, it
compels us to drink the glass down to the last dregs. I have met
many would-be suicides who have survived their attempt, but
I have never met one who did not suffer from some serious
mental defect. We know that all human instincts are capable
of perversion, and the instinct for life is perverted in some people
to such an extent that at the first serious or apparently serious
difficulty met with their reaction is to throw their lives away.
Generally speaking, such individuals, as valuable as they may
be in other respects, cannot be saved. During the first world
war I had cause to observe, again and again during an advance
or in an enemy attack, that it was the soldier’s confidence in
his own life that kept him secure in his own mind even when
his comrade dropped dead at his side. No other illusion is so
firmly implanted in a man as the illusion that it couldn’t happen
to him. But generally speaking the first serious wound deprived
the soldier of that firm confidence, and very often turned it into
its opposite, the fear of death. I am firmly convinced that if
Freud had taken the overridingly powerful instinct for life as
454

A Doctor's Dialogues

the point of departure for his psychological investigations,
instead of the subordinate sexual instinct, he would have
achieved still greater and more fruitful results.

The instinct for life is more powerful than any other. How
often can the doctor see absolutely hopeless cases, old people,
physically utterly decrepit people, clinging fiercely to a life
which is utterly useless to them, and invendng all sorts of
reasons why they must live on, why they have a right to live on
even as a burden to others? There is always something left they
passionately want to be alive to witness : a coronation, a revolu-
tion, a political victory, the birth of a grandchild or some other
happy family event. And there is no doubt whatever that the
span of life is literally extended by such purposeful wishes. This
is the chief reason why it so often proves fatal to advise old
people to retire and ’’take it easy”. When August Thyssen was
in his eighty-fourth year I advised him to extend his field of
operations rather than abandon it, and my advice delighted
him. ‘^How right you are!” he exclaimed. '‘You know that
whenever I have been ill in my life it was always due to my
pleasures and never to my work.” When the Vienna Medical
Faculty decided on seventy years as the retiring age, almost all
the vigorous old pioneers who had to retire died very soon after-
wards. It is best to die in harness, and in that event death will
probably be postponed to the very last minute. This does not
necessarily mean full trappings, pf course, but some definite
activity which still gives life an aim. It may well be a hobby
which is taken seriously. To have nothing purposeful to do —
that is the danger for old people who have led an active life.
Any duty helps to keep the bow of life properly taut, and
therefore I never advise old people to give up their activities
and retire altogether.

During the past fifty years methods of diagnosis have de-
veloped notably, but even to-day too little attention is paid to
a patient’s medical history. Unless the doctor discusses the
case with his patient and thus extracts all possible information,
then the practise of medical science is reduced to the level of
veterinary science. The horse carCt talk, but the patient can.

It is during the important discussion of the patient’s medical
history that he will gain or lose confidence in his doctor, A

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

doctor will construct his diagnosis on the basis of the medical
history of the case, plus the patient’s complaints, plus perhaps
the doctor’s first impression of the patient and plus whatever he
discovers in the first examination on the basis of his five senses.
The result forms the basis on which the further examination and
treatment of the case must take place. The diagnosis is based
on thought association.

The comparative neglect of the medical history of the case
to-day derives from the rapid development of the positive
aspects of medical science and from the great development of
the objective physical, chemical, bacteriological and micro-
scopic methods of diagnosis. The modern doctor has largely
lost confidence in his diagnostic intuition, and he uses his five
senses and trusts them less than his predecessors did. That is
regrettable, because in the last resort the practise of medicine
is an art, and science is its handmaid. A doctor should first of
all examine the relation of the various bodily functions to each
other. A good c^jagnosis is impossible according to any mechani-
cal schema. The final verdict of the doctor should depend at
least in part on his own imaginative intuition. The medical
student must be taught to build up the artistic structure of the
diagnosis from the individual bricks which science affords him.

The taking of the case-history should be accompanied by an
examination, because the first impression will guide the sub-
sequent progress. The doctpr must immediately establish any
constitutional and physiological anomalies. The condition of
the extremities can demonstrate the length of the sickness. A
soft sole suggests a long illness. A hard palm suggests hard
work. The facial wrinkles are an indication of the patient’s
temperament : good-humoured, pensive, choleric or depressive.
Clothing, ornament, tattooing, etc., many things give valuable
information about the personality of the patient. A bluish
teleangiectatic mole in the region of the neck or a third breast
nipple which looks like an ordinary wart, but is erectile, hypo-
spasiasis, cryptorchism, rudimentary gills, polydactilia, birth
marks, etc.

All forms of inhibited development have their own particular
psychological projection, and patients who suffer from them
must be treated in a different manner from ordinary patients.
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A Doctors Dialogues

They react quite differently to the same stimuli. Women with
masculine characteristics — ^for instance, with pubic hair which
does not cease in a more or less horizontal line but grows on up
the belly to the navel in a rhomboid shape — are psychologically
quite different from women who indicate their excessive
femininity by a definite dermography.

The medical history should go beyond the patient himself,
and include such of his relatives as are of importance to the
case, and that does not mean merely his parents, his brothers
and sisters and his children, for the Mendelian Law has shown
us that we must probe still deeper. This, of course, is a matter
of great delicacy, and it is not easy, because quite naturally a
patient will hesitate to reveal the physical secrets of other per-
sons, no matter how closely they may be related to himself.
There is also the danger that information obtained in this way
is distorted by a desire on the part of the patient to show himself
in a better light than his relatives. Illegitimacy, which is natur-
ally of great importance in such inquiries, will usually be con-
cealed. But all these difficulties are as nothing compared with
those which face the doctor when he tries to get information
concerning the patient himself. Exaggerations, understate-
ments and distortions are frequent. They are not always de-
liberate, because very often a patient has formed a very in-
accurate impression of his own personality. In such cases the
establishment of the case-history can develop into a sort of
psycho-analytical investigation. If the doctor suspects the
patient of telling untruths or of concealing the truth, it is
naturally his duty to elicit the truth if he can. When the patient
begins to feel that he is tactically at a disadvantage towards the
doctor with his wide medical experience, then he will usually
abandon his prevarications and become confidential. And here
the doctor must not forget the patient’s lies in his relief in having
got at the truth at last, because a lie will often tell him more
about a patient than the truth can.

The medical history of earlier sicknesses is sometimes difficult
to obtain. The patient will often talk of acidity, congestion of
the liver, nerves, digestive troubles, rheumatism, using many
similarly ambiguous expressions. Pains will often be wrongfully
localized in various organs — ^for instance, pains in the back will

457

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

be ascribed to kidney trouble, whilst pains in the chest will often
be ascribed to heart trouble. As far as possible the patient must
be persuaded not to repeat other people’s diagnoses or to give
his own, but merely to describe his complaints without ascrip-
tion. If this is done it will often prove surprising how accurately
a patient will describe the sudden onset of cramp, the sudden
appearance and the slow disappearance of colic, the pains
suffered in an attack of angina pectoris, the agonizing distress
of an asthmatic attack, and so on. If a patient is closely studied
whilst he is describing his trouble and its symptoms the doctor
can often see from the expression of his face and the gesticula-
tions with which he accompanies his story hov/ deep an impres-
sion his trouble has made on him. At this early stage he usually
describes the symptoms which seem most important to him.
Such symptoms need not necessarily have a great deal to do
with his trouble, but nevertheless the doctor must pay careful
attention to them, because they show him the impression they
have made on the patient. The patients described by Charcot,
^‘les hommes avec les petits papiers”, are not only to be found
amongst patients who suffer from an excessive secretion of the
thyroid gland (Basedow). The doctor must listen carefully to
all his patient has to say, though, naturally, repetitions and
mere chatter can be cut short by questions about other symp-
toms. Pater Gracian gives us sound advice in his ‘‘Hand
Oracle” : “You must let a man talk before you can discover
how little he has to say”. They are words of wisdom for the
medical man.

A doctor must always be cautious in his judgment of the in-
formation given him by a patient concerning magnitudes and
quantities. A patient will always judge his appetite by the
appetites of the people with whom he eats. He will usually
judge the efficacy of his bowel evacuation by the number of
times he goes to stool rather than by the volume of the evacua-
tion. Sweating is judged by the number of times it proves neces-
sary to change clothing. A haemorrhage will always be judged
from the size of the vessel in which the blood is emptied, and
it is always a bowl full. The menstrual flow is always judged
by the number of towels used. And so on.

Few phenomena in the physical and psychological develop-
45B

A Doctor’s Dialogues

meiit of the human being are so important to the doctor as
those of adolescence. The fewer troubles experienced in this
transitional period the more likely is the subsequent adult sexual
life of the patient to be normal, and vice versa. Many mysteri-
ous and unexplainable troubles can often be traced to a hor-
mone disturbance in persons who have experienced difficulties
in adolescence. Quite generally, tact and ingenuity are neces-
sary in large measure if the doctor is to obtain satisfactory in-
formation in matters relating to the patient’s sexual life. But if
he is successful in winning the confidence of his patient and
obtaining a clear picture, this fact in itself will often lead to
astonishing improvements in the patient, particularly if he is
inclined to be neurotic. Open confession is very good for the
soul — and often for the body.

I am inclined to believe that modern medical practice over-
estimates the value of objective examination. An objective
examination of the organ or of the organic system makes it
possible for the doctor to localize the changes, but it is more
akin to a sort of medical sport to discover that a patient is suf-
fering from a hardening of the liver, from pulmonary tubercu-
losis or a cardiac disease of the heart. It is much more inter-
esting and much more important to discover, if possible, how
the patient managed to live with this or that trouble, as he
undoubtedly did up to the moment of his death. Such an in-
vestigation is calculated to give us some idea of what auxiliary
forces the body can summon up to replace the activity of de-
crepit organs, and therefore to give us a pointer to compensa-
tory treatment. To-day medical practice is turning away from
the study of pathological anatomy to the study of the living
functions, from the study of the organ to a study of the living
organism, and that is a very promising development.

Physiology is exclusively concerned with the study of the
normal body, and the experiments on which our present know-
ledge is based have been carried out under exceptional circum-
stances — that is to say, during aggravated functional activity or
extreme functional inhibition. Experiments on organs and tissue
cut away from the living organism are still regarded as valid for
the real living functional activity in the organism. But I hold
that such examinations cannot possibly be valid for the co-

459

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

ordinative, automatic and compensating mechanism which
functions in the living organism. In the best case they are
nothing but individual small stones in the integral mosaic of
life. Further, such experiments cannot possibly show us what
contribution the living forces have made to the maintenance of
life after an organ has been seriously damaged. The restitutio
ad integrum in pathology is a rare phenomenon. In my opinion,
therefore, research should concentrate on explaining the de-
velopment of the natural compensatory mechanism of the
human body, whilst treatment should aim at utilizing it.

The statistical method is valuable for dealing with humanity
collectively, but in medical practice the individual judgment is
the important thing. For instance, we know by experience that
in the present state of medical knowledge, etc., approximately
15 per cent, of all cases will end fatally during an epidemic of
typhus, but that tells us nothing at all about the far more
interesting question of whether our patient will end up amongst
the 15 per cent, who succumb or amongst the 85 per cent, who
survive. In the relation between the individual and his sickness
it is not so much the sickness as the patient who varies. Two
cases of stomach ulcers of the same magnitude ap.d location will
not always justify the same prognosis and treatment. The two
patients may be quite different. If a medical history is properly
secured it will often tell us without more ado why and how a
patient fell ill or met with an accident. Very often a nervous
ailment in its opening stages with a delayed period of reaction
or with a weakening of the co-ordinating mechanism will prove
to have been the cause of an accident, and thus give the first
indication of a tumour on the brain or some disease of the
spine, or some ear or eye trouble. The medical history will
often throw more light on such integral functional disturbances
as reveal themselves in appearance, breathing, pulse, blood
pressure, appetite, sweating, temperature, sleep, physical atti-
tude, gait, weight and so on, than any specific examination can.

One of the best ways to judge a patient's functions is to sug-
gest to him the performance of a task you suspect to be beyond
his capacity and then observe his psychophysical reaction to
the suggestion. For instance, if a heart sufferer is asked whether
he could run up five flights of stairs to the top of the house, you
460

A Doctor's Dialogues

can see from the astonished look on his face what an effort the
attempt to carry out such a suggestion would cost him, and
from that you can judge the condition of his heart. The mere
idea of doing such a thing gives him a fright. A test meal will
give us comparatively little information compared with that we
can obtain from a patient’s facial expression when we talk to
him about his favourite food. If we ask a man who is suffering
from acidity of the stomach whether he could drink a glassful of
melted butter he will perhaps declare that he could, but ask
him the same question when he suffers from a deficiency of
digestive acid and the very suggestion will arouse disgust in
him. This psycho-physical reflex is so finely graded that one
could almost speak of a psychological titration of the digestive
juices.

In all these matters a doctor should remember that the rela-
tion between him and his patient is a reciprocal one. The doctor
analyses the patient by the answers the patient gives to his
questions, and the patient analyses the doctor by the questions
the doctor asks him. It is the psycho-analysis of the psycho-
analyst which produces confidence — or destroys it. The long
view, sympathy, mild judgment, encouragement, advice and
the establishment of confidence — all these things are necessary to
the drawing up of^a good medical history. In no phase of
human relationships are experience and knowledge of greater
value than in the relation between the doctor and his patient.

The economy of the human body is a matter of balance. Too
much food and too little consumption lead to the formation of
fat just as certainly as too little food and too much consumption
lead to emaciation. That would be all very simple but for the
fact that the life-process is a complicated matter. The taking of
food is neither identical with suitability nor utilization. Each
foodstuff has not only a different calorific value, but it is also
differently composed of the various things which go to make up
the human body. The chief things are albumen, sugar (carbo-
hydrates), fats, salt and water. Up to a point one brick can
replace another in the final edifice, but at least a minimum
quantity of each of these basic substances must be taken regu-
larly if life is to be maintained. These various basic substances
cannot replace each other, and it is quite impossible to make up

Janos i The Story of a Doctor

for, say, a lack of albumen by an increased intake of, say, sugar.
Nutritive science lays down the minimum of albumen, fat and
carbohydrates which the daily food of the human being must
contain if he is to remain healthy. As a result of this our diet
has to be a mixed one, and we must take as many calories as
are necessary to maintain our bodily warmth, and thus our
cellular life.

Even when the body is completely still the process of com-
bustion goes on ceaselessly. The heart continues to pump the
blood, the stomach continues the process of digestion, die bowels
continue their movement, the breathing goes on regularly, and
so on, and all these activities consume warmth which must be
produced ceaselessly from the oxygen breathed in with the air.
These vita minima need a food intake of approximately 20
calories per kilogram of bodily weight — ^that is to say, a human
being weighing 70 kilograms needs a minimum calorific intake
of 1,400 calories daily. That is assuming there is no specific
bodily effort, but in the case of a hard-working man, the
calorific requirements can increase to 36 per kilogram of bodily
weight and more. If at any time the intake proves less than the
requirements of the body, then the body takes the balance from
its own reserves. The essential purposefulness of nature is a
constantly astonishing phenomenon. In such circumstances the
body takes the more easily dispensable reserves first, and pro-
ceeds to withdraw reserves from the more important bodily
organs only later and in the order of their vital importance.
Thus the first reserves to disappear when they have to be called
upon are the fatty tissues, then comes muscular substance, but
even in the event of death by starvation the organs of sense, the
brain, the nerves and the heart show little emaciation and more
or less retain their magnitude until the end. One could draw up
a list of the various organs and substances in the order of their
importance to the life of the body according to the order in
which their reserves are drawn upon by the body in need.

The appetite is an integrative fonction. Any disorder in any
function can lead to a lack of appetite, but even when the appe-
tite is good and is generously satisfied by food intake the body
sometimes refuses to accumulate fat. The reason for this may
be constitutional — ^you can’t make a greyhound out of a lurcher
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A Doctors Dialogues

— and therefore it is of no importance for bodily health, but
sometimes there is no accumulation of fatty tissues because the
body is incapable of proper assimilation. Every type of food-
stuff consumed is a foreign body when it enters the stomach,
and it is the task of the digestion to assimilate it to the body and
to use its content for building up and maintaining the body. It
is here that the digestive juices, the vitamins and the hormones
begin their work. The process of assimilation is an absolutely
vital process, but how it happens is still shrouded in the deepest
mystery, but at least we do know how the process can be en-
couraged and its proper functioning increased.

A word of warning against what might be termed medical
fashions seems necessary. To-day the fashionable centre point of
attention is the vitamin. It was, of course, a great triumph for
vitamin research that certain previously mysterious ailments and
diseases, such as rickets and beri-beri, proved amenable to vita-
min treatment, and that certain ailments could be prevented
from developing as soon as they were recognized by giving the
patient the appropriate vitamins. Every time there is some new
step in the development of medical or other scientific knowledge
a storm of enthusiasm is aroused, and the world almost feels
that the panacea for all evils has at last been found, but then the
second stage invariably arrives — the stage of disappointment,
when further practical experience shows that not all the hopes
placed in the new discovery, whatever it is, have been fulfilled.
And after that comes the third stage of misgiving, when it
gradually becomes clear what harm can be done with the new
discovery when it is used indiscriminately. The fourth and most
satisfactory stage often takes years to reach; that is when
scientists have obtained sufficient experience to form an objective
judgment, and separate the wheat from the chaff.

To-day there is a general inclination to believe that we could
not get on at all without artificially adding some vitamin con-
tent or other to our foodstuffs. All other factors are in danger
of being forgotten, and the value of foodstuffs is determined
almost exclusively by their vitamin content, as though tip to
the discovery of tlxe existence of vitamins the world had suffered
constantly from a lack of them; but in reality the avitamin
diseases — that is to say, those diseases which really result from

463

Janos^ The Story of a Doctor

a deficiency of vitamins (as we now know) — were always com-
paratively rare. However, any medical man is entitled to be
proud that even these rare diseases have now disappeared,
thanks to the progress of medical science and the discovery of
vitamins. But ought we now to go so far as to recommend the
artificial addition of vitamin substance to food as a general
measure, even when there are no indications that additional
vitamin intake is necessary? That seems to me an important
question. The ordinary human being well fed on a sufficiently
varied diet never did suffer, at least not in ordinary circum-
stances, from any vitamin deficiency. Vitamins are not rare
substances ; they are found in generous quantities, and in proper
proportions such as the body needs, in our normal diet. So long
as our knowledge of the possible consequences of excessive
vitamin intake — that is to say, of hypervitamin ailments — is not
sufficiently developed, we ought to be cautious, owing to the
possibility of excessive dosages with artificial vitamin substances.
My long experience tells me that it is time to raise a warning
voice against the indiscriminate use of such substances, and to
point out that a generous and varied diet contains all the vita-
mins we know of, and presumably many we do not yet know
of, and in addition other substances and elements which are
still hidden to us, whereas the human body can certainly not
live on vitamins alone.

And the situation with regard to that other remarkable dis-
covery, the hormones, is not much different. In this respect we
have got as far as the third stage; we know what damage can
be done by an excess of hormones, and we have surmounted the
danger. But the trouble is, if I may borrow a metaphor from
the world of music, we rather tend to think ourselves masters of
extreme virtuosity merely because we have learnt to hammer
out the tune with one finger on the piano; we are inclined to
forget the great orchestra which must work in harmony to pro-
duce the full symphony. Undoubtedly the tune is important,
but there are passages in which the contrapuntal effect is still
more important. To return to our hormones, we know some-
thing about this or that hormone ; we know what troubles arise
when this or that hormone is present in the blood in excessive
quantities, and we know the troubles that arise when the body
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A Doctor's Dialogues

does not produce it in sufficient quantities. But what we still
know hardly anything about is the all-important process of co-
operation which goes on between the various hormones in the
human blood-stream, and about their qualitative and quantita-
tive relations to each other. But at least by this time we have
learnt that it behoves us to proceed with caution and not to
prescribe one thing indiscriminately for everything. We know
that the automatic functions of life are regulated by the co-
operation of all the hormones, including the digestive and
assimilatory processes. We know most about the effect of the
thyroid gland and its secretions. We can demonstrate that in
the case of excessive secretion the process of oxidization is
speeded up, and that when the secretion is inadequate the pro-
cess of combustion in the human body is slowed down. To use
a plain comparison, it is very much as though a boiler were
placed under forced draught in the one case and deprived of
draught, or sufficient draught, by closing down the regulators
in the other.

The human body functions best when its intake properly
balances its consumption. As such, the regulation is automatic,
but in the over-civilized life we all lead the machinery is often
subjected to excessive strain. The automatic regulator, or regu-
lating process, must watch over one point with particular care,
and that is the maintenance of an even temperature. When
too much food is taken, then the organism has various ways of
dealing with the surplus: it can eject it without breaking it
down and assimilating it in the ordinary way ; it can turn the
surplus, or part of it, into a reserve fund ; or it can get rid of it
by an expansive release of heat in the form of sweat, bodily
radiation or expiration. These possibilities explain how it can
come about that certain people remain thin despite the intake
of generous quantities of food, whilst others put on fat. In both
cases the temperature remains, with very minor variations, the
same. What we must aim for in our diet is to secure that with
a uniform bodily consumption that minimum of food is eaten
which will maintain the bodily weight at its proper level with-
out important variation. If this ideal rule is successfully fol-
lowed, then the common disturbances of the body’s metabolism
will be avoided.

465

Janos ^ The Story o f a Doctor

Here, too, there are, of course, differences which must be
taken into consideration. Some people like eating, and they
like eating a lot, whilst there are others who eat little. But what
is a lot and what is a little in such cases? It depends primarily
on the calorific content of the food. For the human organism
volume is not synonymous with quantity ; for instance, a glass
of olive oil is not the same quantity in the nutritive sense as a
glass of water, though it is the same volume. Similarly, a pound
of chicken is not the same as a pound of bacon, and so on. Now,
the human being helps himself instinctively to the proportionate
quantities of the various ‘‘heavy” foods. The bread is ten times
as thick, or more, as the butter spread on it, and therefore the
calorific relation of bread and butter is lo : i. We just cannot
eat as much fat as we do lean, as much meat as we can vege-
tables or fruit. Thus big eaters should eat foodstuSs with a
lesser calorific content, whilst small eaters should eat those with
a higher calorific content. The same is true for vegetarians. It
is wrong to suppose that vegetarians cannot suffer from over-
eating and all its consequences. For instance, too much butter,
cream and oil in the preparation of their food will have this
result. And it is interesting to note cynically that an excessive
intake of just these heavier substances with their beloved vege-
tables, etc., is a widespread dietetic offence of vegetarian
gourmands.

In the long run, and given sufficient quantities and sufficient
varieties of food, the human body will find the proper balance-
on its own. Ordinary appetite, particularly strong desires, and
even what seem like culinary whims, are all expressions of the
body’s particular needs. A keen eye at a buffet provided with
a great variety of foodstuffs will show any observer how different
people’s tastes are. The taste of an individual for this or that
food changes not only with his environment, but with the
season, and even with the time of day. What a man is fond of
for his supper he rarely wants for his breakfast, and vice versa ;
in fact the idea is almost disagreeable to him. As a general rule
I hold it to be the best rule for a man to follow the desires of his
own inner man in the matter of what foods he eats and how
much of them.

The same is as true, perhaps still truer, of children and their
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A Doctor’s Dialogues

feeding. In this respect great offences are committed. Medical
truths have an average life of three years. This sad statistical
axiom was enunciated by the great medical philosopher Des-
soir, and nowhere can its truth be demonstrated more clearly
than in our ideas of how to feed our children. The bright and
shining truth of to-day is the damnable fallacy of to-morrow.
The new-born babe comes into the world with a highly de-
veloped instinct for feeding and a ready-made Mneme. It takes
just as much from the mother’s breast as it requires according
to its age and needs, and no one can make it take a drop more —
and try making it take less ! But even a child already influenced
by education will almost always take the right food for itself if
given the choice, though what it takes may not always coincide
with the particular ^‘scientific maxim” of the day. The funda-
mental requirement here is that the child’s taste should not
have been compulsorily corrupted or influenced by inculcated
prejudices.

During the hunger period in Germany (just after the First
World War) I made an experiment whose results were very
fruitful in this respect, I gave a number of hungry children
nothing but bread one day, nothing but pure cream another,
nothing but meat another, and nothing but chocolate another —
on successive days. The quantities thus placed at their dis-
posal were unlimited. At the same time I carefully controlled
the amounts of the various foodstuffs eaten, and my control
figures showed that the children had instinctively eaten the same
calorific content of each foodstuff. That is to say that the calorific
value of the food consumed on each of the test days was the
same. The demand of the body for its normal calorific require-
ment had functioned perfectly through the instinct of the child,
despite the fact that hunger, a longing to eat lots of delicacies
previously unobtainable, greed and so on might have been
expected to falsify the experiment.

Naturally, the human body has a great capacity for adapta-
tion, and in consequence it is able to assimilate foodstuffs which
are not properly adequate in nature. There is such a practical
thing as an average nutrition, and that is very useful when pre-
paring the food of the masses of the people (particularly in war-
time and times of shortage). This can, of course, take no

467

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

account of individual tastes, but it must be suited to the general
environment, and come from the general neighbourhood, and
not be brought in from far-off climes. Having regard to present-
day transport possibilities, with their speed, this last postulate
may seem an excessively fussy one, and, in fact, it is of no great
importance for the ordinary healthy man, but for the more
delicate person with a less robust capacity for adaptation a
deviation from this rule might have the same sort of effect as
the rarefied air of the mountains sometimes has on people who
normally live by the sea, or as a northern climate has on people
who normally live in a southern climate. The degree of adapta-
tion is a measure of health and vitality. During the First World
War I saw prisoners unloaded from a heated cattle truck with a
temperature of 30 degrees (Celsius) of heat into an outside tem-
perature of 30 degrees of cold. Many of them showed no signs
of distress whatever at the sudden change of 60 degrees in the
temperature, whilst others fell ill and suffered from swelling.
Pilots have flown at enormous heights without showing any
signs of distress, whilst other people have to make two pauses
for some considerable time to achieve the transition to the
height of St Moritz without ill effects. The same great degree
of adaptation in their feeding can be demanded of many with-
out the least trouble, but delicate persons will do best on a diet
which comes from their own environment. The strong and
healthy man can stand almost any variations. The law of
accommodation can be applied to any bodily function, and we
shall return to it on many occasions when considering other cases
of adaptation. And now for my alter ego^ the hypothetical patient
who asks me the convenient questions I am anxious to answer.

In discussing physiology and particularly in referring to the digestive
processes^ bodily assimilation and so on^ you repeatedly used the term
automatic^'* ; what do you mean by that in such a connection?

Fundamentally speaking, our whole, what I may term vege-
tative life is automatic. Very little is left for us to decide on our
own initiative. Let us take the question of our nutrition. We
are brought to eat by a mysterious bodily feeling we call
hunger. Out of a large variety of foodstuffs we choose (or we
did choose when we had the chance) what our inner man sug-
468

A Doctor's Dialogues

gests. After that we have the very conditional freedom that,
having looked at it, smelt it and tasted it, we can put it into our
mouths, chew it and finally swallow it — or spit it out after the
first taste if we don’t like it and are prepared to defy the usual con-
ventions. Up to a point, therefore, it looks almost as though the
whole process was guided by our own free will. However, once
you have swallowed the food all voluntary control over it ceases
and it comes under the undisputed direction of the automatic
controller, and the whole bodily process of digestion proceeds,
as I have said, automatically. The secretions of the liver and
the pancreas are exuded, the bowels make their typical move-
ment, the food is broken down, the beneficial content is isolated,
the useless rest is eliminated, and so on. A tremendous and
extraordinarily complicated task of unconscious co-ordination
and automatically succeeding processes is performed, and the
part the will has played in the whole affair is very small. If we
take this process as a paradigm we can judge how small is the
conscious control of our lives.

We have now approached another important question — that
of free will. If we accept the purpose of life to be the main-
tenance of life and the perpetuation of the species, and when we
observe that these processes are largely automatic, then the only
purposeful mental process is that which fits us consciously into
our social surroundings, into the common life of our society —
in short, everything which is laid down for us in the Ten Com-
mandments as the only rules of social life.

If all religions could be boiled down to this simple residue our
social continuity would be guaranteed for ever, for no two men
could live side by side for long unless these Commandments
were obeyed. Our thought has an almost exclusively social
task. It is not essentially necessary for the well-being of our
vegetative life. We should just as well be able to exist with our
animal instincts, our reflexes and our tropisms. I am anxious
to avoid stepping on to the slippery plane of philosophy and
theology, for I am no acrobat, so let us leave it at that.

Is it possible for the conscious will to disturb the unconscious^ vegeta--
tive life ?

Certainly, and almost all medical intervention does, in so far

469

Janos j The Story of a Doctor

as it does not support and encourage the natural automatic
functioning of the human body, but runs counter to it. The
violation of this simple rule is the source of so many medical
misdeeds. A doctor should humbly accept the principle : medicus
curaty natura sanat, A grain of sand can bring the complicated
mechanism of a watch to a standstill. The grain of sand bears
no responsibility, but arrogant human beings who would like
to change the whole wonderful mechanism on the basis of
radical a priori conclusions based on tlieir own ignorance most
certainly do. An example of what I mean is the present-day
attitude of so many medical men who jump at the chance of
removing a patient’s appendix, peeling out lus tonsils and drag-
ging out all of his thirty-two teeth as a sort of error of nature.
At the risk of being denounced as a reactionary stick-in-the-mud
I must raise a warning voice against this light-hearted scalpel
and forceps brandishing. These ultra-modem medical men are
very much like the ultra-stupid serving-wench who tipped the
baby out with the bath-water. To take a different example. A
lightning conductor which is not properly earthed is worse than
no lightning conductor, but to seek to abolish all lightning con-
ductors, whether properly earthed or not, on that account is
ignorant folly. The great benefits of surgery are being abused
in our day by ultra-radical practitioners.

The problem of feeding a normally healthy human being is
rather too complicated for the laying down of universally applic-
able rules, but generally speaking one can say that a healthy
man who eats the good food of the general neighbourhood in
which he is living, and who does not eat more of it than is
necessary to keep his bodily weight more or less stable, will be
doing the right thing by his stomach. Quite generally one can
say that a good diet is one that suits you. One thing is certainly
true, and that is that permanent over-feeding does much more
harm and brings far more people to an early grave than any
temporary shortage. This is a rule that applies in particular to
children, though, of course, one must not go to the other ex-
treme. Milk is quite generally over-estimated and even abused
as a food. For wasting sicknesses, and in cases where other
nourishment proves difficult, milk is certainly a good food,
though it must always be borne in mind that it should be taken
470

A Doctor's Dialogues

in sips^ and not drunk straight off like water, as it so often is.
But it is, despite its advantages, a greatly over-estimated food
for both adults and children — ^naturally, I am not referring to
sucklings. Offhand I cannot think of any animal apart from the
domestic cat which shows any great liking for milk as a food
once it has been weaned. Milk and milk products are highly
desirable in the preparation of nourishing and tasty foods — that
is, as ingredients to a good kitchen — but considered as a food in
itself milk is, from the standpoint of its nourishment, expensive
and unsuitalDle.

The idea of the rampant chemical fan that the ideal food can
be contained in a pill is another one that should be stamped on
thoroughly. Eating and nourishment are not the same thing,
though they may and, fortunately, often do amount to the same
thing. From the standpoint of what is known as ‘^physiological
nourishment’’ the thing that matters is the nourishment value
of the foodstuff, but that is only conditionally correct. A horse
chews up go per cent, of indigestible ballast such as cellulose in
order to obtain lo per cent, nourishment, whereas an ordinary
civilized human being eats about lo per cent, undigestible
ballast to obtain go per cent, nourishment. This is certainly
unnatural, and there is hardly a similar instance in nature. The
human organism could not continue to function for any length
of time on a food pill (or anything analogous). Food must have
a certain bulk and contain matter which affects the intestines
purely as a mechanical stimulant, which cannot be broken up,
which remains behind after the process of digestion as slack, and
which forms the main bulk of the evacuation. The intestinal
canal can function only when it receives suitable material to
work on. If the food intake lacks sufficient bulk, then the intes-
tinal canal grows flaccid from lack of work, and in consequence
the whole digestive process suffers and insufficient nourishment
is obtained ifrom the food eaten. For this reason alone it would
be fatal — literally fatal in the long run — to attempt to live on
foods which can be wholly broken down by the digestive pro-
cesses, such as eggs, cream, butter, milk, caviare, etc. We must
therefore also consume woody and fibrous stuffs, such as are
contained particularly in vegetables, grain and fruit, and in
generous quantities. The intestinal canal has an overall length

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

of something like eight yards. It is a muscle and, like all other
muscles, it must be given enough to do if its tone is to be kept
healthy. In this respect a vegetarian form of feeding is greatly
superior to a form of feeding based primarily on animal sub-
stances. But the best form of feeding is a mixed diet. For one
thing, the construction of our teeth suggests that a mixed diet
is the proper one for human beings. Our physical constitution
is that of an omnivorous animal, and we should be well advised
to bear this in mind and arrange our diet accordingly.

What effect has the war and war-time feeding had on the population?

Since the introduction of rationing this country can be com-
pared with a sanatorium in which careful attention is paid to
dieting. No one, not even the most inveterate grumbler in his
wildest exaggerations, can talk about starvation or even semi-
starvation in this country, though unfortunately this has not
been true of many other countries during the war — and after.
This country has always had a sufficiency of everything really
necessary to maintain good health, and, of course, there has
most certainly been no danger of over-feeding. Tlxe result is
undoubtedly that since the introduction of rationing the general
health of the country has improved. Future statistics will show
us the favourable effects of moderation in diet even more clearly
than we can observe them to-day, but any medical practitioner
knows from his own experience that many metabolistic dis-
orders, such as gout, diabetes, stomach troubles and liver dis-
turbances, have been noticeably reduced in incidence and
severity. People who suffered from minor disturbances of the
liver, people who were ‘‘liverish”, have discovered that during
the rationing, which reduced the number of eggs they consumed
almost to vanishing point, their liverishness has largely dis-
appeared. The only field on which in my opinion there is a
real shortage is the fat supply, and here it would be very advan-
tageous for the general health of the country if the ration could
be increased. Apart from that, the shortages on almost every
other field are made good by the liberal quantities of bread
available. People who suffer from any form of wasting sickness
are certainly badly off, even with their priority rations. The
stringencies of the time fall heaviest on them. A further diffi-
472

A Doctor's Dialogues

culty of war (and post-war) rationing is that of prescribing any
particular diet. However, on the whole I am firmly convinced
that the number of cases of real hardship as a result of rationing
in this country are infinitesimal compared with the vast num-
ber of people whose health has benefited by it. The founders of
the early religions of mankind knew what they were doing
when they sprinkled fast days over the year.

Whilst the nutrition problem in this country is largely solved,
the situation in much of the rest of Europe represents one of the
most important and difficult post-war problems. The distribu-
tion of existing world supplies is primarily a transport problem
for non-European countries, but in war-torn Europe there is
unfortunately every likelihood that it will take some time before
ordered conditions return and the food situation becomes
normal. The problem has three main facets : {a) the keeping
alive of those who have survived so far; {b) the filling up of
deplenished reserves ; and (r) the building up of the youth. The
last category must include the re-convalescents as well as chil-
dren and adolescents. Many sympathetic souls are inclined to
salve their consciences by pleading for extra-large supplies of
vitamins to be sent to Europe. This is an absurd proposal.
The situation is far too serious for amateurish fooling. The main
truth in this respect, and I repeat it deliberately, is that normal
foodstuffs contain all the vitamins necessary to life and health,
but vitamins in themselves are not nourishing and they are not
food. Fats, vegetables, bread, meat and animal products are
necessary for good all-round nourishment, and it will be a long
time before the world will be able to get along without rationing
these essential foodstuffs. Credits must be made available for
the purchase of supplementary quantities where necessary.
Until a people, any people, is properly fed it cannot begin to
pay for its food, etc., with its labour power.

In view of the fact that during the war Germany plundered
the invaded countries of their foodstuffs and food products for
her own benefit, it is only just, in my opinion, that the victim
countries should receive preferential treatment now, and that
they should have first call on world food supplies. And even
then no exaggerated sentiment is appropriate with regard to
Germany, whose agriculture has been developed with the aim

473

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

of making her people as self-sufficing as possible in foodstuffs.
The first duty of the world is towards Germany’s half-starved
victims. The highly effective transport system which was built
up for war purposes should now be turned to the needs of
peace. A world food office should be founded, with power to
control the movements of all foodstuffs, and no ship should be
permitted to unload anywhere in the world without its Navi-
cert. Control was extraordinarily effective in war. Why should
it not be equally effective in peace? Imported foodstuffs should
benefit first the children, then women between twenty and
forty years of age, then manual workers and finally the rest of
the population. That the gro\\dng youth should have priority
is quite clear to everyone. I then propose that women between
twenty and forty years of age should be next on the list because
experience shows that the ovular activity of hungry women
begins to decline. Thus in the interests of coming generations
women in the full period of sexual maturity should be as well
fed as possible. Their counterpart is, of course, the men in the
same period of sexual maturity. Older people, who represent
about one-third of the total population, are on the whole better
off with a limited supply of food, provided that it does not sink
below the minimum calorific value necessary.

During and immediately after the first world war Germany
suffered grievously from under-feeding. Ernest Starling, the
well-known physiologist of London University, was sent to
Germany by the Government of the day to investigate the de-
terioration of public health in Germany by under-nourishment.
The German Government instructed me to assist Starling in his
task and show him everything necessary. The situation we
found in working-class districts, mountainous districts, mining
districts and in prisons was terrible indeed. Starling, a man of
generous temperament and nobility of character, was so horri-
fied at what he saw that on his return to England he became
one of the leading spirits in the movement of opposition to that
provision of the Versailles Treaty which called for the surrender
of Germany’s milch cows. With this and other measures he was
certainly instrumental in saving the lives of hundreds of thou-
sands of children, though, to be sure, it is a depressing thought
that these same children were amongst tliose who as adults
474

A Doctor's Dialogues

cold-bloodedly took the bread from other people’s mouths and
let them starve.

One of the most obvious phenomena during tlie hunger ^
period in Germany was the deterioration in mental capacity
a,mongst school children. Experienced teachers have assured
me that it amounted to something like a third. Another very
obvious feature of that period was the loss of size and weight in
both children and cattle. In the schools desks no longer fitted
children in the age categories for which they were intended.
The children were all about a year behind in their growth, and
they never recovered this loss even when things changed for the
better. A whole generation was stunted, though this does not in
the last resort seem to have made much difference to their sub-
sequent working capacity. Girls who suffered from under-
nourishment entered the ovulation period later, whilst with
adult women it tended to disappear altogether. Similarly, the
sexual capacity of males was reduced, with the result that the
birth rate fell noticeably. Generally speaking’ one can say as a
result of this involuntary mass experiment that damage to
health as a result of under-nourishment began to show only
after bodily weight had dropped more than 1 5 per cent, of the
total normal weight. Middle-aged people were demonstrably
able to stand under-nourishment better than any others, and,
in fact, the experience often proved of benefit to them. These
middle-aged people, in the economically most productive period
of their lives, recovered more rapidly than others, and once
normality had returned they were as healthy and vigorous as
ever. It was thanks primarily to these people that Germany so
quickly recovered her position in the world.

As a medical man the experiences of the front-line soldier in
the first world war greatly interested me. I was, I must confess,
astonished to observe after a while that, despite the wet and
cold of trench life, rheumatic fever played little or no role in
their troubles, and that despite a comparatively low standard
of nourishment, the German soldier hardly suffered from
stomach disorders, I had difficulty in finding cases of stomach
trouble, arterio-sclerosis, kidney shrinkage, apoplexy, diabetes
and gout for my lectures behind the front line. On the other
hand, cases of tuberculosis, dysentery, influenza and other in-

475

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

fections were very numerous and the mortality rate was
extremely high.

Great as was the damage done to mankind by these sicknesses
and by the consequences of wounds, disablement, weakness and
so on, the psychical damage was far greater. To put it gener-
ally, war psychosis results in an aggravation of existing peace-
time tendencies : the great becomes greater, the bad becomes
worse, the good becomes better. The basic characteristics of
races, nations and individuals are enhanced and become visible
as though looked at through a magnifying glass. The inhibi-
tions imposed by civilization and community life tend to dis-
appear. In the re-valuation of all values the inborn lower
instincts are released and search for expression. Murder, rob-
bery, etc., become virtues. They are given the cloak of “hero-
ism’’, and not only permitted, but encouraged. The result for
the post-war generation is deplorable.

The intake of nourishment and the expenditure of energy are
essentially related to each other. If this relation is not properly
regulated, then in the event of excessive work — relatively
excessive expenditure of energy — ^the human tissues waste away,
whilst in the opposite case — a too great intake of nourishment
in relation to the expenditure of energy, z.^., exercise, etc. —
fatty tissue accumulates. As I have already pointed out, when
the intake of nourishment drops below normal the body falls
back on its reserves, and the first to go are the substances the
body can best do without — and what is more thoroughly useless
than the deposits in the joints, for instance, or the surplus quan-
tities of blood which are effectively reduced, together with the
intake of salt. To keep himself thoroughly fit in ordinary times
a man should either strictly adhere to the fasting ritual of one
of the old religions, or stay in a dietetic sanatorium for three
weeks every year. Modern warfare, with its necessary control
and reduction of nourishment, has much the same effect, but
it is otherwise a rather costly way of achieving a desirable result.
Another way of preventing the deposit of fatty tissue, etc., is
by working off all the energy contained in the food intake by
physical exercise. Incidentally, a thoroughly healthy body will
go far towards regulating itself. In the event of an insufficient
intake of nourishment it reduces the consumption of energy,
476

A Doctor's Dialogues

whilst in the case of excessive food intake there is often an urge
to greater physical activity to work it off. Bodily activity is the
safety-vent for accumulated energy. It is a reversible process,
and if there is anything wrong with the appetite and the meta-
bolic process generally they can often be encouraged to greater
activity by bodily activity. Now, although we are in a position
to exercise an effect on bodily weight, etc., by controlled ex-
penditure of energy, there is little we can do about chronic
wasting. There is a big difference between what is called
slimming and chronic wasting.

What is your opinion about the fashion for slimming?

The world of mankind, particularly of womankind, can be
divided into two camps : the camp of those who want to get
slimmer and the camp of those who want to get fatter. There
is another camp, of course — the camp of the satisfied — but this
is not a large one. The question refers more to fashion than to
hygiene. In a period of pronounced sexuality mankind favours
the voluptuous figure, whilst in a period marked by economic
and other crises the slim figure is more favoured. To-day
women prefer to look as much like boys as possible, and they
have changed not only their clothes, but also their bodily
stance, and even their bodily form. To-day a woman is almost
ashamed of having breasts at all. And the remarkable thing is
that in recent years the female breast has gone some consider-
able way towards atrophy. But is this disappearance of the
breast a cultural achievement? We must, I am afraid, regard
it as a sign of physical degeneration. Incidentally, plumpness
and slimness are both racial characteristics. Anyone can slim by
artificial means, but once the procedure is abandoned he will
return to his normal bodily tendency.

There is one difference to be noted. The corpulent can attain
a maximum bodily weight, and beyond that they can accumu-
late no further fat ; but with artificial means slimming can be
continued to the absolute point where there is no more fat at
all. Thus stuffing cures find their own limit, whilst slimming
has no limits, and is therefore dangerous. There is no simpler
task than to get down any man’s weight. All that is necessary
is to reduce the calorific intake with a certain technique. On

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

the other hand, a full knowledge of metabolistic physiology is
necessary to put fat on to an obstinately thin person.

Nothing is the cause of nothing, but nevertheless you can
often hear people, and particularly women, say sorrowfully:

eat so little and yet I put on fat’’. But, as I have already
pointed out, it is not quantity alone that counts, but primarily
the fat content or quality of what is eaten. For instance, in a
plate of thick soup there can quite easily be a quarter of a
pound of butter, representing the calorific equivalent of over
three pounds of bread. Inquiries are therefore necessary before
accepting the statement of such a person that he, or she, eats
little. With less food, particularly less fatty food, anyone can
reduce his weight to the amount he requires. Some people find
it more difficult to reduce than others, but I have never met
anyone whose weight could not in the end be reduced by a
strict diet.

The situation with regard to increasing weight is rather dif-
ferent. Qjiite apart from the fact that it is not easy to get any
one to increase his food intake considerably in quantity, we are
not in a position to affect the fat relation on which any particular
organism is based. Disturbances of the fermenting and enzyme
digestive processes, inadequate resorption, intensified combus-
tion or expenditure of heat, and many other hormonally regu-
lated functions can act as a hindrance. It is far more difficult
to overcome these obstacles than it is to secure a reduction in
weight.

The ideal would be to mould the body to our wishes by con-
trolled increase and decrease, and ways and means to this ideal
condition are being sought: putting on here and taking off
there. But there is one physical infirmity where the outlook is
quite hopeless. I refer to the aesthetically disagreeable depen-
dent and protuberant belly of advancing years. Man has prac-
tised an upright stance and gait for a long time now, and in
accordance with the laws of gravity the internal organs tend to
sink. In youth the muscles, etc., are strong and resilient and
they hold the internal organs nicely in place, but with advancing
years they lose their resilience, and the result is the pot-belly
we see so often in middle-aged and elderly people. Sad, but
once the muscles have lost their youthful elasticity there is
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A Doctor's Dialogues

nothing to prevent the inevitable. sag. Even that great youth
Falstaff was characterized by thin legs and a pot-belly. They
are characteristics of advancing years.

Generally speaking it is not advisable to meddle with a man’s
constitutional tendencies. Every man has his constitutional
hang, and it should be respected. Where we can intervene is
against excess, but even here we should go warily. Once again,
it is dangerous to reduce bodily weight by more than 15 per
cent.

What is understood^ physiologically speakings by work and tiredness?

Just as every machine can expend as much energy as it con-
sumes combustible material to turn the heat into energy, so all
bodily activity, or work, is controlled by the process of oxida-
tion proceeding in the body. The food intake is burned up in
the organism ; it produces bodily warmth and enables the body
to perform physical activities — ^in short, to work. The food in-
take is stored in the body in an easily combustible form (glyco-
gens) to be ready for immediate demands on it — Le,^ for imme-
diate combustion. Oxygen is necessary for the process of com-
bustion. It is obtained from the air by the process of breathing,
and transferred to the blood, which is then uniformly distributed
over the whole body by the heart-pump. Thus blood is neces-
sary to any bodily effort, or, more accurately, blood must be
present before there can be any expenditure of bodily energy.'
The greater the work to be performed — Le,^ the greater the
energy to be expended — the greater supply of blood must be
available. There are many and varied differences between the
working of a machine and the working of the human body, but
this necessary blood supply is the most important one. The liv-
ing organism arranges automatically that everything is ready
for the process of combustion at the point where it is required,
and it does so by sending to the proper spot whatever quantity
of blood seems requisite to the task to be performed. As the
quantity of blood available in the human body at any one time
is stable, this is done by taking blood from parts where it is not
at the moment required and sending it to the part or parts
where it is required.

At this point, though to my regret, I must remind you of

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

Kant’s theory of cognition, for this automatic transfer of blood
is based on experience. First of all, the amount of work to be
performed must be present in our minds, and only then does the
blood transfer take place automatically to the extent which
experience has shown to be requisite. Let me give you an illus-
tration of the process : Supposing we are having a tug-of-war.
We shall require a different amount of strength for pulling
against a full-grown man than for pulling, let us say, against a
boy. After summing up an opponent we put as much strength
into it in each case as we feel a priori we shall need to keep us
balanced. If we use too much strength because we have over-
estimated the strength opposed to us, then we shall lose our
balance by falling backwards. Our expectation was disap-
pointed. Physiologically speaking we can say that the work was
done before the action was performed. We can demonstrate
this process quite simply. We can measure the amount of blood,
let us say, in a man’s arm by means of an apparatus known as
the Onkometer. If the Onkometer is placed on a man’s arm
and we take the reading of volume as it normally stands, and
we than tell the patient to imagine that he has to lift a twenty-
pound weight with that arm, we get an immediate reaction to
the suggestion in the Onkometer reading before anything else
has happened- In other words, immediately on receipt of the
mere idea that the arm would have to lift a twenty-pound
weight sufficient extra blood was pumped to the arm muscles to
enable them to carry out the proposed task, and this before the
slightest attempt was made to do the proposed work. The
greater the weight you suggest that the patient should lift the
greater is the amount of blood pumped into the arm in ques-
tion. The same phenomenon occurs, and can be measured in
the ear, when the patient is told to solve a mathematical prob-
lem. This is the so-called psycho-physical reaction.

As long as this automatic blood transfer takes place regularly
the tiredness curve will be normal, but should anything go
wrong with the automatism of this phenomenon — ^for instance,
should the extra blood be sent to the arm when the patient is
asked to solve a mathematical problem, or to the head when he
is asked to raise a weight with one arm — ^then the organ in
question 5 will tire much more rapidly. It is this perverse, or

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erroneous, blood transfer which is the most frequent cause of
slight tiredness, of neurasthenia or myasthenia.

In the process we have been discussing there is an amalgama-
tion of the psychical and the physical, and the blood transfer
can work wonders. Fear makes a man pale. Blood leaves the
head — ^and the toothache vanishes on arrival at the dentist’s.
Seeing that blood transfer is brought about by an idea, it is
clear that here we have a field of operation for a trained will.
This is the basis of cures brought about by Christian Science or
Coueism. For instance, one of Coues classical cures was of a
psychological nature. A man’s marriage threatened to founder
on a belated recognition of the wife’s lack of pulchritude. Goue
put the matter in order by getting the man to repeat to himself
doggedly: ‘‘She isn’t as ugly as all that”.

What is the role played by rest and activity in our daily life ?

Life consists of alternating periods of activity and rest. A
man becomes physiologically tired in order to rest, and he rests
in order to become active again. There is a tendency in the
modern sophisticated lady’s world to regard tiredness as an
ailment rather than as a physiologically conditioned state. The
human organs require rest just as much as the muscles. One
man has a great reserve fund, the other hasn’t, but whichever
is true in any particular case, the normal alternation of rest
and activity is not affected.

But what about the heart? That never rests, surely?

Such is, I believe, the popularly accepted view, but it is in-
correct. What applies to the other organs applies also to the
heart : the period of activity is logically and necessarily followed
by the period of rest. The real “work” of the heart is performed
when its muscles are contracted to press the blood out into the
veins, but this action takes up only one-third of the whole period
of one pulse-beat. During the other two-thirds the heart rests
and its muscles are relaxed whilst the returning blood refills the
heart in preparation for the next contraction. The heart, so to
speak, works an eight-hour day, and a healthy heart does no
overtime. The following biological principle must be kept in
mind: what is used is maintained and developed; what is not
Q 481

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

used becomes atrophied by inactivity. Thus use — that is to
say, e3cercise — is necessary for all the body’s working parts.

But, as in every expression of life, there can be no dogmatism
here. We can neither recommend nor forbid as a general prin-
ciple. It is an individual matter. What suits one man doesn’t
suit another. That is the point of departure for the process
known as individualization. To be on the safe side, however,
one can say, generally speaking, that the weaker man, or the
sick man, should rest in order to avoid tiredness, whilst the
strong and healthy man need rest only after and because he has
become tired. In this way we take into reasonable account the
general volume of reserve strength each individual is likely to
possess and which each individual must regard if he is not to
overdo it. Everyone knows from experience that this reserve of
strength varies not only from individual to individual, but also
from one season of the year to the other, and, indeed, from one
time of the day to the other.

The psychological factor also plays a role, but here we must
distinguish carefully between work and performance. By con-
centration the performance can be increased. For instance, let
us suppose that a man lifts a hundredweight. The work done
remains the same if that hundredweight is raised in ten instal-
ments. This should make it clear that the work limit and the
performance limit are two different things. Here lies the differ-
ence, too, between sport and gymnastics. In sport the limit of
performance is to be extended, whereas in gymnastics it is the
limit of work. Sport can naturally lead to over-exertion, whilst
gymnastics remain within the innocuous limits of work. Sport
aims at setting up records in time and performance; it is thus
competitive, whilst gymnastics is based on moderate exercise
and therefore excludes any over-exertion.

What actually happens when gymnastic and sport performances are
increased by training?

Training generally speaking secures the hypertrophy of the
muscles by exercise, but that is de facto only a fraction of what
exercise attains. What training should unconsciously attain is
that only those muscles or groups of muscles which are necessary
for the effort, whatever it is, are used, whilst all other muscles
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A Doctor'" s Dialogues

and groups of muscles remain relaxed, thus eliminating all un-
necessary muscular effort and saving energy. Nature always
seeks to achieve its results by two co-ordinating and opposing
forces. The active force, or the protagonist, is always opposed
by the antagonistic force, the antagonist. The difference of
these two forces makes the sum of effort, the performance. In
a motor-car progress depends on how much remains of the
power developed by the motor after the antagonistic counter-
force of friction has been overcome. For every positive force the
human body sends into action there is a retarding force at work.
Training seeks to relieve the positive muscular forces from the
retarding antagonistic muscular forces. Thus as his training
progresses the athlete will free himself more and more from the
antagonistic forces, until finally his whole body is relaxed apart
from the muscles, or group of muscles, required for the par-
ticular performance he is engaged in. In this way the energy
required to perform any movement will be less, with the result
that, despite the attaining of a higher performance, the onset of
tiredness will be delayed. In other words, '‘staying power” will
have been increased.

Thus what training teaches the athlete is not so much what
he must do as what he should not do. It teaches him not to
contract muscles which are not required for the work in hand.
It is clear that when the available energy is concentrated on
fewer muscles, then the work performed can be performed more
economically and more efiectively, whereas if energy is at the
same time expended on the antagonistic muscles it is wasteful
and unsuited to the task in hand. To return to my beloved
world of music for an example : watch the master at the piano ;
see how his whole body is relaxed, with the exception of the
muscles he needs for his work. And then watch the tyro; see
how his whole body is tensed, including his mimic muscles and
his toes. It is this secret which explains how it comes about
that an old woman can dig potatoes all day long without exces-
sive exhaustion, whilst if an inexperienced athlete tries to do the
same he has to give up exhausted long before the old woman.
The old woman has learned by long experience to use only
those muscles which are necessary for the digging of potatoes,
whilst the inexperienced athlete will invariably use aU his 330

483

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

muscles at the same time and expend so much energy that be-
fore long he has to take a breather. He has used perhaps a
hundred times as much energy as the old woman.

Tou spoke of the master at the piano ^ and what you said was true
enough^ but you forgot to add that when his piece is finished he often
collapses into himself like a heap of clothes despite the economic use of
his muscles^ and his arms sink to his side in obvious exhaustion.

That is no argument against what I have said. The master
at the piano has not only performed a great amount of physical
labour with his hands^ but he has also been in an acute state of
psychological tension. His whole organism has been brought
into an extreme state of tension and excitement. The psycho-
logical tension is indefinable and lies beyond muscular tension,
beyond the technical performance. It is the crown; the actual
technial performance is merely the pre-condition of the triumph.
As long as any sort of work arouses no impression of tiredness in
the observer it is agreeable, but as soon as the effort becomes
obvious the performance is imperfect. The elegance with which
any movement is performed, whether it be riding, singing,
discus or javelin-throwing, violin-playing, dancing or golf, de-
pends not on the action itself, but on the relaxation of that part
of the body which is not involved in the particular movement,
whatever it may be. When this elegance is present, then what-
ever concentration is necessary appears as masterly ability^ and
not as strained effort. Anyone can run after a sort, but I don’t
think I am exaggerating when I say that to watch Nurmi run
was an artistic pleasure. The same is true of Cotton’s play on
the links or Gordon Richards’ riding on the turf. They are the
Carusos of their particular metiers.

In^ everything connected with learning the teacher should
concentrate rather on what to unlearn than on what to learn.
The real capacity of a pupil can be discovered only when he has
been brought to abandon all his bad habits. Before that it is
impossible to see how far his talent goes. The technique of a
movement must become automatic if it is to be really effective.
Only when that stage has been reached can the new factor
enter into account : the “feeling’^ for the thing, the “soul” of the
thing, if you like. Only the man who has completely mastered
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A Doctor's Dialogues

the technique of whatever it is he proposes to do, so mastered
it that it has become second nature, can achieve perfection.
He, so to speak, forgets the technical difficulties and free play is
left to ‘Teeling’’, ‘‘soul” or whatever you like to call it. From
being a handicraftsman he becomes an artist.

What exercises would you recommend to maintain bodily health?

Generally speaking, those sports and exercises are best for
health which do not need concentration on any particular set
of muscles. As an example of an unfavourable sport or exercise
from this point of view I mention cycling. Sports and exercises
which involve the whole body are the best, such as tennis,
swimming golf and rowing. We are living in an age in wliich
sport and physical exercise are popular — almost fashionable,
one might say — and I could count on a lot of facile approval if
I came out wholeheartedly in favour of them, but I am not
going to. On the other hand, I am not, and I do not wish to
be considered as, an opponent of sport and physical exercise.
Sport is an excellent education not only for the body, but for
the character. The famous children’s doctor Adalbert Czerny
used to say: “Sport is necessary if only in order to keep the
youngsters from getting up to more foolish tricks”. No doubt
there is something in Czerny’s standpoint, but it does not seem
to me to hit the nail squarely on the head. The great benefits
which sport has brought to this country have consisted quite as
much perhaps in an education in self-discipline, poise and self-
confidence as in physical advantages. Physical exercises, or
sport in the wider sense, represent a valuable compensation for
the tiring hours spent in mental study by young students — I
am assuming that the young rascals do spend tiring hours of
study. Sport also awakens and develops a sense of healthy
competition. Thus I have no objection to sport ; quite the con-
trary — ^unless it is overdone, and it is overdone if it is practised
at the expense of intellectual activity. In proper hands society
has nothing to fear from sport ; quite the contrary. It is only
when sport is misdirected that it leads to brutalization and
many other evils. However, there are dangers in sport even when
this is not the case. Excessive sport, and sport carried out with-
out proper supervision, can be a physical danger to the indi-

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

vidual. During my long years as a medical man I have seen
people crippled for life by sport — that is to say, men who have
developed chronic heart and other troubles owing to excessive
effort and strain in sport. Such cases are exceptional, I grant,
but they are not rare enough to dismiss as mere unfortunate
accidents. A dangerous factor is the rage for new records. They
are often paid for by premature ageing and a shortening of the
expectation of life. Any insurance actuary will tell you that the
expectation of life of an Oxford or Cambridge Blue is five years
less than that of a student who has not been such an athlete.
Athletes are favoured candidates for angina pectoris.

Gymnastics are quite a different thing. Every animal needs
physical movement if it is to live, and so does the human
animal.. But no animal exerts itself unnecessarily, and the
human being should keep his gymnastics well within the bounds
of exercise. With the exception of the truly sedentary life which
condemns its votaries to occupy the seat of a chair for many
hours a day, almost all occupations and professions offer suffi-
cient opportunity during the course of the day to take systematic
movement.

So much for exercise; but what about rest? What is the best way to
rest?

The resting body needs above all a relaxation of the muscles
of the trunk and joints, which give man his erect stance
and thus the physical singularity which distinguishes him in
the animal world. Maximum rest can be obtained only in a
recumbent posture. But that is not the only reason why the
resting body should adopt the horizontal position. Another
reason is that the circulation must occasionally be freed from
the hydrostatic pressure on the blood in the vessels, etc., and
on the water and lymph in the tissues. When the body is upright
a hydrostatic pressure is constantly operating, according to the
distance from the soles of the feet to the heart. When the body
lies horizontal this pressure on the veins and the tissues ceases.
Sitting achieves part of the same effect, but not so completely
as lying.

V^en the body is resting the reserves which have been used
up in previous action are replaced and the poisons caused in the

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A Doctor^ s Dialogues

body known as tiredness are eliminated. The muscles, glands
and the circulatory system which have been exerted in previous
action now recuperate to be prepared for further demands on
them. A young and healthy human organism has a rapidly ris-
ing recuperative curve, whilst sick people, old people and people
unaccustomed to physical effort recuperate more slowly. This
can often be seen clearly in the ring when a tired boxer goes
down to a punch, stays resting on the floor of the ring until just
before the count, and then springs to his feet and fights on with
renewed energy. In that short space of time his forces have
recuperated and he is fresh, or at least much fresher, again.

And what about sleep?

Once we know just what sleep is, if we ever do, the analysis
of dreams may become less obscure. To-day as doctors all we
know about sleep is what artists and philosophers have taught
us. It is astonishing that the physiologists have paid so little
attention to such an important function. Sleep is undoubtedly
one of the most important of all the functions of the human
body, and it is less easily controlled by the will than any other
of our vegetative functions. A natural need for sleep exists, but
its degree varies according to individuals. Some people get
along perfectly satisfactorily with only a few hours’ sleep a day.
Others suffer from pathological sleeplessness. At this point,
however, a word of warning is necessary. In my experience the
patient’s evidence as to how long he sleeps is usually unreliable.
People who suffer from any degree of insomnia are more than
a little inclined to exaggerate their sufferings. I used to control
the time slept as far as I was able with a time-control watch.
Usually it was not long before I received the watch back again.
Unless there is some unusual and pathological excitement pre-
sent, or perhaps really overwhelming worries, our sleep reflex
functions very well on the whole. When there is sleeplessness
otherwise, then we usually find that some organic function is out
of order — for instance, very often catarrh of the nasal cavities.

However, this is not intended to be a dissertation on insomnia,
but merely a few remarks in passing on a burning question of
the day. It is a burning question of our day because in my time
I have observed that insomnia is on the increase. As a young

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

practitioner I was very little troubled by complaints of insomnia,
but from 1900 onwards various medicaments and drugs to pro-
duce sleep shot up on the market like mushrooms — obviously in
answer to an increased demand. My pharmacologist teacher
Liebreich started the ball rolling with his discovery of chloral-
hydrate. Down to this day I still consider this to be one of the
best of the sleep-inducing medicaments on the market. The dis-
covery of the barbiturates by the famous chemist Emil Fischer
was the peak achievement of the pharmaceutic-chemical indus-
try, and since then there has been little new beyond the names
of the various preparations ; they are all fundamentally deriva-
tives of barbituric acid. It is not impossible, of course, that
pharmacological propaganda has done something to increase
the sleep need and the sleep requirements of civilized humanity.
Still, let me not be cynical, there certainly are cases in which
these drugs have worked beneficially, and with a modicum of
care they are not dangerous.

As far as danger is concerned, let me console the over-anxious
by pointing to the example of a good friend of mine who has for
a long time now been compelled to have resort to preparations
against insomnia on account of a harmless but inconvenient
tumour on the brain. He started taking them about thirty
years ago. To-day he is over seventy. In the meantime he has
consumed literally pounds of the stuff and has done great work
on the biochemical field. I hope he will remain with us for a
long time yet — as he shows every indication of doing — to con-
tinue writing his fat tomes.

On the other side of the line there are sleep gymnasts who can
sleep when, where, how and as long or as short as they like.
Napoleon is reported to have been one. If what they say of him
is true, then at least in one respect I resemble him : there is no
situation in which I cannot sleep. I slept equally well in the
enormous silence of the countryside, the drumfire barrage of the
Aisne, and through the barrage and bombs of the London
Blitz. However, if I am sleeping through loud noise I invariably
wake up as soon as the noise ceases. I have never in my life
been awake longer than thirty-six hours at a stretch, and very
rarely twenty-four hours. I am quite able to follow a lecture or
to enjoy music whilst I am asleep. Mothers sleep peacefully, but
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A Doctor^ s Dialogues

they wake up at the first slight movement of their sucklings.
With strict self-discipline a man can wake up at whatever time
he chooses. Thus the feeling for time can be kept alive and
isolated when all other feelings are at rest. However, the best
way to sleep is to surrender oneself completely and uncondi-
tionally to one’s sleep requirements,

I believe that even in sleep there is a constant interchanging
relation between intellectual and physical functions, and that
there is a continuity of intellectual activity perhaps along
changed lines of association. Byron was aware of this fact when
he let Manfred declare :

‘^MyMumbers — ^if I slumber — are not sleep,

But a continuance of enduring thought
Which then I can resist not.”

Ideas which have reached deadlock in the waking hours may
be revived in sleep, carried on and developed to maturity until
they are finally born again whole in wakefulness as sudden
inspirations. I can give evidence on the point. I invented, or
“gave birth”, to a number of valuable things in my sleep — ^for
instance, my sack test, which permits the measuring of the
blood gases jfrom the exhalations ; my method of lung percus-
sion, a universal apparatus for colorimetry; a safety-cap for
high-pressure analyses, etc. The Lord gave them to me in my
sleep quite literally. It is interesting to note that whilst Zeus
slept the virgin Pallas Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, sprang
fully armed from his brain. That has always struck me as a
wonderful symbol of the unconscious birth of a higher humanity.
In short, sleep is not an interruption of life, but its continuation
under other conditions. Sleep has therefore no similarity with
death. It is not “the little death”, and the phrase somnus similis
morti is an error.

In sleep the individual is at the mercy of his associates, and
there is no finer test of their true characteristics than how they
behave to him when he is asleep. The way a man treats a
sleeping companion indicates goodness or brutality, love or
hatred, or — ^what is worst of all in the relations between human
beings — complete indifference. A decent man willingly grants
his neighbours his sleep ; a bad man envies him his peace. Dis-

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

trust people who wake you violently, and trust those who wake
you gently and without shock. They are really considerate for
your well-being. A philosopher once declared: ‘‘My servant
wakes me by dragging aside the curtains ruthlessly; my wife
wakes me with my breakfast; my children wake me with
kisses”.

It is bad enough not to be able to sleep to the full, but to be
awakened violently is a shock to the system which has to be
overcome, and in the long run no one will be able to stand it.
A man should be awakened from sleep and returned to wake-
fulness with all its paraphernalia gradually. A brutal awaken-
ing, the shock it gives to the system, can easily be the cause of
tiredness during the day. The pessimist who sighed : “What sort
of a day is it likely to be when it begins with getting up?” was
undoubtedly a man who was wakened from sleep without con-
sideration. There was once a professor of philosophic juris-
prudence in Budapest named Julius Pikler, and he was very
anxious to formulate the conception of a waking instinct. I
often discussed the matter with him, but we could never agree.
I denied the existence of any waking instinct. In my opinion it
is the gradual filling of the bladder and the increasing need
for emptying it which prevents our sleeping indefinitely.

What do you mean by heroic classical treatment?

As I have already mentioned in the body of this book, empiric
medicine has always used five methods of procedure known as
the heroic curative methods. The progress of medical science
has not removed the necessity for any of them, and they are
likely to continue in use as long as there is a practical medical
science. They are: fasting, purgatives, emetics, sweating and
blood-letting.

The conservative upholding of these five procedures is in no
way opposed to the development of school medicine and the
progress of medical science. It is a deplorable and arrogant
over-estimate of our capacities to throw these tried and trusted
methods of procedure on to the scrap-heap as many doctors
tend to do to-day. The older and more experienced a man be-
comes the more critical he is likely to be of scientific “progress”,
but to be critical does not mean to reject. Once a modern
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A Doctor^ s Dialogues

achievement has proved itself there is no one who welcomes it
more enthusiastically than the man of experience* Usually such
achievements tend to justify older empiric methods, or to turn
their use into more suitable channels, or to limit their applica-
tion, or possibly replace them by more effective ones. The
heroic methods are a permanent phenomenon in practical medi-
cine, and it is the task of modern medical science to give them
a scientific basis of operation. An indiscriminate application of
these methods is the hall mark of the quack; their conscious,
controlled and limited application is the task of practical
medicine.

What do you think about irregularity in the evacuation of the bowels?

Unless we give the intestinal tract sufficient bulk to work
upon we cannot expect proper evacuation. Unfortunately this
very simple truth is little understood. Even really intelligent
and clever people show no understanding for this simple fact.
They grasp it when it is explained to them, but they don’t want
to understand it. Between their brain and their bowels there
seems to be a sort of intellectual barrier. They don’t seem to
realize that there is any connection between the two. But it
was not for nothing that the Hippocrats launched the conception
of hypochondria into the world. If something is in disorder in
the stomach, below the diaphragm, the hypochondrium, then
the psyche is disturbed in consequence. The Hippocratic school
has divided the life of man into three ages : in youth a man lives
for his stomach ; in maturity he lives for sex ; and in his declining
years he lives for his bowels. Hypochondria is one of the most
widespread and devastating troubles from which mankind
suffers and is a full-time occupation. Twenty-four hours a day
are hardly enough for it. I once visited a monastery in which
the early morning greeting of the monks to each other was not
to wish each other good-day, but to announce the result of
their attempts to evacuate their bowels, and their voices were
joyful or sorrowful according to the result they could report.
Their reports were made in classic Latin. The incident was
recalled to my mind when I came across the phrase in Bums
^'Your Latin names for horns and stools”.

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

Unfortunately the successful evacuation of the bowels does
not satisfy the true hypochondriac. He wants to produce more
and more, and in the end a vicious circle is set up from which
he cannot escape. It may arise that almost all the faculties of
the hypochondriac are affected and he has only one worry : will
the morrow see success or not? And all this although his intel-
lect is otherwise clear ! From simple constipation to this deplor-
able picture there are innumerable stages which merge one into
the other.

The strict observation of regularity in the evacuation of the
bowels seems to be a characteristic of civilized society. Amongst
savage tribes, and even amongst less civilized Europeans, the
daily evacuation of the bowels is by no means a necessity, nor
is it a physiological necessity. There is no need to despair when
bowel evacuation takes place at longer intervals than twenty-
four hours. In the Balkans bowel evacuation once a week is by
no means unusual, and those who function in this fashion are
not unhealthy. It is an astonishing fact that a healthy intestinal
tract absorbs suitable substances and rejects unsuitable and
damaging substances. It is a point to be borne in mind that
this selective semi-permeability can be blunted by the chronic
use of purgatives.

What I have said in the previous paragraph should not be
taken as an encouragement to abandon our daily habits ; it is
intended merely as a warning to the over-anxious not to get
nervous when minor irregularities occur. Incidentally, the
regularity of bowel movement can be influenced and disciplined
by punctually fulfilling various conditions, such as time, or
taking certain naturally laxative foods and drinks, such as coffee.

There is another question which is connected with our diges-
tive processes, and that is the generation of stomach gases. The
process of fermentation and digestion going on in the bowels
constantly produces gases. When the circulation functions
properly such gases are taken up by the blood, sent to the lungs
and expelled in the ordinary course of exhalation. But if too
much gas is produced, then the blood is unable to absorb it all
and the unresorbed surplus escapes frankly or treacherously in
the usual fashion. Flatulence, as this proceeding is called in
polite language, is more unpleasant for the sufferer’s associates
492

A Doctor's Dialogues

than it is for himself; in fact, he is not a sufferer at all ; it is they.
However, when this surplus gas formation is connected with a
sort of bowel paralysis, then the result can be a very disagreeable
distension of the stomach (meteorism). On the Continent this
occurrence was not particularly frequent as an object of medical
attention, but in England the situation was different, and the
phenomenon was of some importance. Another happy result
brought about by war-time rationing with its changes both in
quality and quantity has been the almost complete disappear-
ance of this particular trouble from the doctor’s consulting-
room.

The best and simplest way to approach the problem of con-
stipation is for the sufferer to take plenty of cellulose, or rough-
age, in the form of vegetable fibres, fruit fibres and wholemeal
bread. The best fruit for this purpose is the pineapple. Yes, I
know it is unobtainable at the moment, but times will change.
There are, of course, cases in which the patient remains con-
stipated even when he is on a suitable diet, and in such cases
nature has provided us with a great many and quite harmless
remedies to help us easily over the minor troubles of constipa-
tion. In any case, don’t let constipation worry you. Boas, the
pioneer of our modem ideas about stomach and intestinal sick-
nesses, said to me when he was over ninety years old and him-
self suffered from constipation : “Some people need glasses and
others need pills; both are harmless”.

However, we should do our best to secure regular bowel
action without artificial aid. The civilized life we lead often
results in unsuitable food habits, and decay as distinct from
fermentation may set up in the bowels, or the process of fer-
mentation may get in disorder, with the result that self-poisoning
takes place and the unfortunate victim falls ill. For such and
similar reasons, mankind is never likely to be able to do entirely
without^ purgatives. The enema pump has always been part of
the armorial bearings of the medical guild. Modern medical
ideas tend to oppose a mechanical evacuation of the bowels, but
it is unlikely that practical medicine will ever be able to do
without it entirely. In my experience when this method is used
with moderation and expert knowledge nothing but good has
ever resulted.

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

And what about emetics? Do you still think that this procedure
should keep a place in modem medical procedure?

Since Kussmaul discovered the stomch pump at the end of
the nineteenth century, emetics to bring about artificial vomit-
ing have been less and less in use. However, the practice of com-
pelling the stomach to contract and secrete by such methods
can still be useful. Paracelsus (who used suggestion even in his
grandiloquent name ‘‘Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus de
Hohenheim’’) regarded vomiting practically as a panacea, and
before him the Hippocratics used it intensively not only for
stomach disturbances, but also for psychical disturbances — ^for
instance, with maniac depression. I cannot be so enthusiastic
about this old remedy as the ancients were, but I must say that
in certain desperate cases the violent emptying of the stomach
by some such harmless medicament as ipecacuanha or tartar
emetic is worth trying. In this way, and sometimes only in this
way, the organism can rid itself of certain poisons which would
otherwise keep it ill. Vomiting is also a natural protection for
pregnant women, and also for people suffering from gout,
uraenemia and other diseases of chronic poisoning.

Why should we despise vomiting as a curative method when
we require a cleansing of the body? Sea voyages have the repu-
tation of doing people good. Frankly, I would put down a lot
of the good done to the fact that the pleasure is often preceded
by healthy vomiting in sea-sickness. For many passengers an
attack of sea-sickness has probably proved just the sort of
internal spring clean they needed.

And what about sweating as a curative method?

Sweating is an important function of the skin. The skin is the
biggest of ail the human organs, and at the same time it is the
most important regulator of our other functions. Just as every
impulse is carried from within to the periphery by the central
nerve system so every impulse is carried from without by the
skin. Without this mutual relation the absolutely necessary
regulation of bodily temperature would be impossible. The
regulation is done from a brain centre. The human organism
can only live healthily at a certain optimal temperature:
37 degrees plus-minus 5 degrees is the bodily temperature at
494

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

which life is possible (98*4 degrees Fahrenheit). This tempera-
ture must be controlled with the greatest finesse in order that it
shall not sink too low or rise too high for life. This thermo-
regulation is mainly the function of the skin, and it is carried
out by means of sweat-glands. Surplus heat is given off in
sweat, which need not necessarily be liquid. By the retention
of sweat warmth is accumulated. Everything depends on the
proper and prompt reaction of these microscopically small
sweat-glands in the skin.

I once knew a family in which the father and two children
suffered from rudimentary development of the sweat-glands.
It was painful to see their sufferings on a hot day. At one time
there was a shocking music-hall turn for the benefit of a sensa-
tion-loving public which consisted of covering beautifully made
girls with bronze paint and showing them as living statues. Their
sweat-glands were unable to operate through the paint varnish,
and it was a great effort for them to perform the slow and grace-
ful evolutions the turn demanded, and wherever they trod their
soles left wet marks, as though they had just stepped out of a
bath. The organism defended itself against this piece of brutality
by expelling sweat in great quantities through the only part of
the body which was not coated with paint, the soles of the feet.
No one could stand this form of torture for very long.

Thus the human skin has an all-important function to per-
form, but although this fact is quite well known the skin is
rarely given rational care and attention by its owners. The
general tendency is either too much or too little. Fortunately
the marvellous thermo-regulatory system of the body is tough
and practically fool-proof, so that even grossly bad treatment
does not affect it readily. Human sweat will find its way out
somehow even under the most unfavourable circumstances in
order to maintain life or save it.

The expulsion of sweat has another purpose apart from that
of regulating bodily heat. The skin is also an organ of elimina-
tion, and poisons are ejected from the body in sweat. Popular
and traditional medicine has therefore always held the sweat
cure in high honour. Up to the present school medicine has
made little contribution to the problem. That is a great pity
because when applied with moderation and knowledge this par-

495

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

ticular heroic curative method is extremely valuable for ridding
the body of poisonous substances. The South Americans have
found the right method of meeting their sweat requirements.
They all drink herba mattee tea. It is far from being a pleasure,
for it tastes foul, but in the climate of the Argentine it is a real
necessity, at least for anyone engaged in manual labour. The
natives drink it as their national drink ; the immigrants drink it
because it is an imperative necessity if they are to exist com-
fortably and be able to work hard in such a climate, I have had
mattee analysed and apart from the usual stimulating substances
found in tea and coffee, it contains matteine whose sudorific
properties are second to no other specific known to pharma-
cology. It can be recommended to all those whose sweat-glands
are not sufficiently active and who are, in consequence, inclined
to premature exhaustion.

The human skin was discovered by quacks, and is now cared
for by cosmeticians. Despite the great progress made in derma-
tological science the study of the relations between the human
skin and the human organism as a whole have been rather neg-
lected. At last things are changing in this respect. Within its
limits the science of hygiene occupies itself more with the skin
now than it ever did before. The water cure derives from a
shepherd named Priesnitz and Pastor Kneipp ; the air and sun-
light cure derives from a quack named Rickli, who opened his
sanatorium in Veldes. All in all it is only about a hundred
years that the world has known anything about systematic
hydrotherapy. Perhaps a century is too short a time, for the
world is still not greatly interested in it. Up to the present only
Vienna University has had a permanent chair for hydro-
therapy. It was here that the apostle and founder of scientific
hydrotherapy, Winternitz, worked. I am sure that all that is
needed to bring this unjustly neglected medical discipline into
fashion again is the appearance of a new enthusiastic apostle.

Hydrotherapy uses both volume and temperature of the water
(and sometimes the addition of medicaments) to influence the
functioning of the human skin and thereby the organism gener-
ally. Bathhig is a means of cleansing the body. At this point let
me utter a word of warning prefaced by the willing admission
that I should not like to live amongst people who did not take
496

A Doctor's Dialogues

baths regularly. There is a danger in too much bathing. There
is hardly an animal which willingly wets itself to the skin.
Animals are protected from direct contact with the water by
hair^ scales, crusts, feathers and what not even when they go
into it. Further, there are sebaceous glands which prevent the
water from penetrating into the skin. This can be seen clearly
in new-born babies. When they are taken out of the bath the
water just runs off them like pearls. However, such warning
indications are ignored by the civilized human being, and he is
not content until he has thoroughly removed his natural pro-
tective covering with soap and scrubbing-brush. Soaps enter
into a chemical reaction with the products of the sebaceous
glands and the resultant amalgam is soluble in water. Thanks
to our own lack of gumption we render ourselves defenceless by
scrubbing away our protective layer of skin-grease. I have
neither time nor space here to discuss the tremendous amount
of colds, etc., which are brought about in this fashion.

As I have already indicated, I am in favour of regular baths,
for social reasons, if for no others, but I should like to see no
more than a mechanical rubbing for cleanliness, and, in any
case, people inclined to bodily weakness should avoid soap as
far as possible. When they must use soap such people should
follow the custom of the ancients in the salivarium and rub
themselves in with some animal fat or oily substance in order
to give their skin the protection it would otherwise lack. Fortu-
nately very few people take baths as often as they pretend they
do. In this respect people’s habits are interesting and charac-
teristic. The sophisticated lovers of life take their bath at night
before they go to bed, whilst the egoistic duty-fiends take theirs
in the morning before they dash off to work. The former want
to be beyond reproach at night, and the latter during the day.

The skin can be cared for not only by means of water, but
also by sun and light baths. Exercises taken naked are valuable
because they give the body a chance of sweating imiformly and
not only at the points favoured normally by the absence of
clothing. It is immaterial whether this exercise is taken in the
open air or behind closed doors. The main thing is that if the
general temperature of the air is low the body should remain in
constant movement. Please don’t jump to the conclusion that

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Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

I am a fresh-air fanatic. I am nothing of the sort. Fresh air,
like all other good things, should be taken in moderation. Man
is a troglodyte, and nature has given him very little hair to pro-
tect himself. He must clothe his body if he is to survive. Per-
manent life in the open air is just as unnatural, and likely in the
long run to be just as damaging, as constant living in an in-
sufficiently ventilated atmosphere. Men who follow an out-
doors occupation, whether they are taxi-drivers, farmers, police-
men or what not, tend to age prematurely. If anyone doubts it
let him compare the general appearance of a synod of bishops
with a committee meeting of a sport association. The compari-
son between the durability of the indoor scholars and the out-
door sportsmen should prove illuminating. Or compare an old
peasant woman with a society woman of the same age, a woman
who probably spends many, many of her evenings — often far
into the night — ^in a stuffy ballroom, and her days largely in
her boudoir.

The great successes which have been obtained by fresh air in
the treatment of tubercular and torpid cases are misleading if
they betray us into general conclusions. What is right and
proper as part of a curative regime need not be right at all for
life-long practice by healthy people. Something which is re-
freshing and beneficial for an hour or two a day can easily be
deleterious if practised for the whole twenty-four hours of the
day. An animal likes its stall, and if it has to live in the open
all the time it tucks its head into its breast at night and breathes
in a part of its exhalations in order to protect itself from too
much fresh air. Some people sleep regularly with the covering
pulled up over their heads.

After this word of warning against all too much firesh air,
fresh-air fanatics may accuse me of opposing the use of firesh
air. Nothing of the sort is true, but fresh air should be taken in
moderate and reasonable quantities, and this is true of all other
natural elements. One thing I am certain of, and that is that
long hours spent in libraries and cafes have done less harm than
time spent in draughts or sleeping with the windows wide open
in inclement weather. I am sure that I have put my foot into
it thoroughly here. The fresh-air apostles will howl for my
blood, and the others won’t have courage enough to rally round
49 ^

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

me. I was well aware of this when I decided to break a lance
against such revered hocus-pocus. Dixi et salvavi mimam meam.

The consequences of excessive fresh air often show themselves
in excessive richness of the blood, which can be just as dangerous
as the anaemia of the bookworm. Quite honestly, I don’t know
what constitutes the difference between bad air and good air.
I have made innumerable analyses of the air with the precision
gas-analysis apparatus I invented, and my invariable results
show that the quality of the air in a room not previously aired
and with doors and windows closed in a house built solidly of
bricks is very little different from that of the open air in the
famous Swiss spa Davos as regards both the oxygen and carbonic
acid content. That has always seemed food for thought to me.
Fluegge, my teacher in hygiene, was in such despair about this
question of fresh air that he formed a theory that bad air con-
tained a fatiguing element breathed out by human beings, but
he had to abandon it in the end. The truth is that in the present
state of our knowledge it is as well to be cautious in accepting
the wild claims made in favour of ^^ozone”. The movement of
the air, its temperature and its freedom from dust are the chief
factors which refresh and benefit us. The actual composition
of the air seems to be of very little importance except in extreme
cases.

What about the sun?

The sun is certainly, as we know, the source of all life.
Radiation biology has kept pace with the development of radia-
tion physics. In this respect there is no need for us to be
ashamed of the state of our Icnowledge to-day. But the more we
have learnt about the effect of the sun’s rays the more cautious
we have become. Much still remains to be discovered, but what
we already know shows that here, too, moderation and know-
ledge are necessary in the use of the sun’s rays. We know that
sun and light must not be prescribed indiscriminately, but only
when certain definite indications are present, and even then
only in very definite dosages and with all the necessary precau-
tions against the damage which can be done to the body if it is
exposed to short-wave rays.

Our bodies rapidly adapt themselves to the differences be-

499

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

tween day and night, but only very slowly to the differences
between one season and the next. Perhaps it is due to this vary-
ing condition of physical adaptation that certain cures have
different results at different seasons of the year. The tanning of
the skin is a natural protective measure, and therefore an indi-
cation of the reactive capacity of the organism. Only a healthy
body can produce the pigment necessary to prevent the absorp-
tion by the body of too much sunlight. People whose reactions
in this respect are vigorous need not fear the rays of the sun, but
those who react only slowly have every reason to treat the rays
of the sun with caution.

For training the body in this respect the artificial ultra-violet
ray apparatus is an achievement which can hardly be over-esti-
mated. In countries like this, where the sun is an irregular
visitor and stays for short periods only, this beneficial invention
should be brought into general use. I feel sure that before long
it will be regarded as indispensable in the care of children. We
do not know exactly how the sunlight affects the organism, but
we know that a readjustment of the molecules takes place under
the effect of the sun’s rays, and this can be demonstrated in the
simple experiment of subjecting vitamins to rays.

Tou mentioned cosmetics jtisi now; what do you think of cosmetics
for the skin?

Cosmetics have developed into a new industry, and that is
a good thing. In my opinion it is the duty of everyone, whether
man or woman, towards his fellow men to appear as sesthetically
pleasing as possible. Where nature has treated him hardly he is
entitled to improve matters artificially. Truth does not ^^exist” ;
it ‘'appears”. When he imitates agreeable truths convincingly,
then so much is won, and we contribute to the amenities of
social life.

Here, too, what I have previously said about moderation is
applicable. The thing can be driven to excess — and unfortu-
nately it often is. One can experience grotesque things in this
respect, and the only consolation lies in the knowledge that it
is well meant, even when the object is unpromising and the
methods unsuitable. On the whole Hollywood and the film
stars have given the world a good example. Since the advent of
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A Doctor’s Dialogues

the films the female world has greatly improved in appearances.
Before lipsticks and make-up came in almost all girls seemed
either chlorotic or anaemic. Thanks to cosmetics, these troubles
have practically disappeared. Since women have begun to use
rouge openly the sale of iron and other blood preparations has
sunk considerably. The incidence of anaemia has also decreased
considerably.

Cosmetic operations are thoroughly justifiable. Experience
and developing technique have worked wonders. The classic
pioneer on this field of plastic surgery was the famous Berlin
surgeon Joseph, known generally as Noseph, for obvious
reasons. His operations on that organ when its appearance
offended were little short of miraculous. He was also a pioneer
in face-lifting, and he did away with bags under the eyes,
wrinkles, and other blemishes. He was an undersized little man
of no very prepossessing appearance himself, and several of his
own operations would have improved matters considerably, but
in those early days he could not trust himself to his pupils — or
he didn’t care. To-day face-lifting is widely practised. It has
already left the stages of experimentation and become an
ordinary school operation. Cosmetic or plastic surgery has
extended its operations to many other parts of the body. Joseph
has operated on the female breast either to reduce it in size or
to lift it. His operational methods were certainly ingenious,
but so far the technique has been a failure. Despite every pos-
sible care, such an operation is more likely to cripple than to
beautify. Cosmetic surgery to remove belly fat, hip fat and exces-
sive calf tissue is also still in the dangerous stage. The artificial
moulding of the human body has its limits, and excess tissue
cannot be surgically removed with impunity.

A well-known Vienna surgeon named Gersuny got the idea
of smoothing out wrinkles by paraffin injections. It seemed a
brilliant idea, and it certainly did what it was intended to do.
I remember the enthusiasm with which the idea was taken up.
Doctors from all parts of the world streamed to Vienna to
attend his lectures, and the auditorium was like a medical
babel. However, before long it transpired that the injected
paraffin caused a serious stoppage ^of the lymph circulation
and made the life of the victim a misery.

501

Janos ^ The Story oj a Doctor

Welly all we^ve got left of our heroic curative methods is blood-letting,
rd like to hear something about that too.

First of all we must remember that the blood volume in a
human body is variable and is regulated according to need.
Between 5 and 8 per cent, of the bodily weight of an adult is
accounted for by his blood. Within the general regulation each
organ is provided with the amount of blood it needs according
to its function. If the blood channel is enlarged in any par-
ticular area there may be congestion. When the total volume of
blood is increased, as in the case of arterio-sclerosis, and the
veins lose their elasticity, this leads to a general overfilling. In
such cases it is often a wise and beneficial thing to procure relief
by blood-letting. The importance of assisting the circulation
when it needs assistance brought me to my special study of
haemodynamics. It would lead much too far here if I attempted
to go into details, and it would necessarily be too scientific to
interest the general reader, but let me say one thing which may
console over-anxious people who have given of their blood dur-
ing the war to help the wounded: all my experience goes to
suggest that it will have done these people of middle age far
more good to give up a hundred cubic centimetres of their
blood than it can have harmed one or two less suitable subjects.
Naturally, blood-letting must be undertaken only on the basis
of individual indications and when a preliminary examination
has shown that the subject is a suitable one for such intervention.

Tou hear a lot about blood pressure nowadays. What exactly is
meant by it?

Blood pressure is a physiological magnitude, like temperature,
breathing, the pulse and so on. It is an integrative expression
for a co-ordinated organic function, and just as there is no
pulse disease, or breathing disease, or temperature disease in
which these functions are affected as the result of bodily
changes, so there is also no blood-pressure disease or sickness.
Every change in blood pressure is the result of a general, or at
least of a systematic sickness. No reasonable doctor to-day
would attempt to treat fever as a sickness instead of treating the
causes of the fever, the infection, whatever it may be. It is
just as nonsensical to attempt to treat the blood pressure instead

A Doctofs Dialogues

of treating the cause behind it. Fever is a warning signal to the
doctor to find out what is behind it and treat that, and in the
same way anomalous blood pressure is a sign of sickness, and it
is up to the doctor to find out what it is and treat it accordingly.
Just as the normal temperature is a centrally regulated function
and varies with a warm-blooded animal around 37 degrees
Celsius, so the normal blood pressure is likewise centrally regu-
lated, Fever and sub-normal temperatures are also centrally
regulated from the brain, except that the measure is either
higher or lower, but always remains within the limits in which
life is possible. If the regulated function in question approaches
the danger point either way every possible security measure is
brought into play to prevent its exceeding the limit beyond
which life is impossible.

If these security measures fail, then life ceases. If they suc-
ceed, then life is preserved, but not without cost. Fever brings
a lack of appetite with it in order to prevent any over-heating
of the body. Sweat breaks out in order to get rid of the surplus
warmth produced. Each organ does whatever is in accordance
with its function to contribute to the end result, which in this
case is to prevent the over-heating of the body. The same sort
of thing happens, though with different means, when the aim
is to protect the organism against any excessive rise or fall in the
pressure of the blood.

Now to-day we know that the phenomenon of fever is a pro-
tective one and that it aims to overcome the sickness with which
the body is suffering. The same is true of blood pressure, and it
would therefore be just as nonsensical to rob the organism of its
protective measures by some thoughtless application or the
other to lower the pressure as it would be to forcibly suppress a
fever. The point to be remembered is that in the given circum-
stances the body can continue to live only because the pressure
of the blood has been raised.

The blood pressure of the individual must be respected in all
circumstances, and any intervention directed purely against the
blood pressure as such is to be condemned as a medical error.
If the arteries of the patient have become hardened, then it is
impossible for him to continue to live except with an increased
blood pressure, and it must be remembered that a satisfactorily

503

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

compensated sickness is very similar to health, and a man can
live on quite satisfactorily with it even though he is subjected to
certain limitations. On the other hand, the reduction of blood
pressure in cases of arterio-sclerosis robs the body of its com-
pensations, and is therefore dangerous. We can be quite certain
that the body knows what it is about when it creates its com-
pensations, but the point in which it is not so accurate is a matter
of degree ; sometimes it over-compensates and at other times it
compensates insufficiently. In such cases the task of the good
doctor is to find the perfect balance, and once again the medical
warning should be taken to heart : medicus curat^ natura sanat.

When the pulse is taken, a rhythmic beat is perceived. If
these beats, the ebb and flow of the pulse wave, are controlled
by a registering instrument, the pressure at which the beat takes
place can be determined. When measuring the pulse in this way
we find that the pressure declines from its peak until a new beat
drives it up again, and that the pressure never sinks to nil, but
always retains a certain minimum. In the period between the
maximum and the minimum pressure the blood is being driven
through the capillaries, until tide pulse — ^that is, the contraction
of the heart muscle — ^fills the arteries with fresh blood.

The blood in the arteries is thus under permanent hydraulic
pressure, thanks to the elasticity of the artery walls, under dy-
namic pressure owing to the contraction of the heart muscle, and
under hydrostatic pressure when the body is standing upright
owing to the gravity blood pressure which is determined by the
height from the ground, a point we have already mentioned
previously when dealing with the problem of rest. When the
body is recumbent hydrostatic pressure no longer exists. When
the body is upright it amounts to as much as the dynamic
pressure on the soles of the feet reckoned from the height of the
heart — ue.^ approximately 150 mm. mercury. Maximum pres-
sure shows the dynamic pressure — that is to say, the force with
which the heart muscle presses the blood into the arteries. Mini-
mum pressure shows the pressure which is still present when the
next pulse-beat begins. As, however, this pressure depends on
the runaway in the capillaries, the minimum pressure is a
measure of the condition of the capillary system. To put the
matter briefly, the maximum blood pressure shows the strength
504

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

of the heart, whilst the minimum pressure shows the condition
of the capillaries.

As simple as that all sounds — or does it? — it becomes ex-
tremely complicated when one goes into details, as I did in my
last book.* All I wanted to indicate here was that the discussion
and solution of such questions must be left to the expert, and
that amateurish tinkering should not be indulged in. At the
same time I see no reason why the layman should not be en-
lightened as far as possible concerning the significance of such
and, indeed, all other biological problems. One thing should
have been made clear to him by this simplified account, and
that is that the problem of blood pressure cannot be solved by
any generality, and that the man with ‘‘high blood pressure’’
has not necessarily any more cause for alarm than the man with
“low blood pressure” has necessarily any cause for complacency.

Blood pressure is the bridge between the soul, for want of a
better word, and the body, and their mutual relations express
themselves more obviously here than elsewhere. The decided
feeling of elation with strongly beating heart, the feeling of
fright when the heart “beats in the throat”, and the negative
feeling of depression when “the heart has fallen into your boots”
— all these feelings and every feeling in between are communi-
cated by the blood pressure.

From the practical point of view the most interesting disorder
on this field is arterio-sclerosis, and because old-established but
nevertheless erroneous views still persist, not only amongst lay-
men but also amongst doctors, I propose to say a few words on
the subject. The first idea that must be combated is that arterio-
sclerosis is a disease of age which must inevitably lead to death.
Widespread statistics collected during the first world war and
continued during the second have revealed the starding fact
that no less than 6o per cent, of the men between the ages of
twenty and thirty who died suffered from arterio-sclerosis of the
great and specifically coronary arteries. As, however, only 7 per
cent, of them actually died as a result of this arterio-sclerosis, it
is crystal clear that the trouble had either healed up in part or
had come to a harmless standstill. In short, arterio-sclerosis is

* ^‘The Blood Pressure and its Disorders, including Angina Pectoris’^,
Professor Dr. J. Plesch, Bailli^re, Tindall & Cox, London, 1944.

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

not the desperate and hopeless progressive disease of old age that
most people think it is. Further, it is quite definitely curable.

Arterio-sclerosis as the result of advancing age need be taken
no more seriously than presbyopia, the progressive far-sighted-
ness which also sets in with advancing years. This optimistic
viewpoint may astonish many people, and I have no doubt they
will be no less surprised when I tell them that the sclerosis itself
is not the trouble at all, but a compensatory form of cure for the
real disease which underlies it, arterioatonie. Arterioatonie is a
condition in which the arteries lose their elasticity and are no
longer capable of adequately resisting the pressxire of the blood.
In this condition they are subjected to over-strain, with the
result that microscopically small splits and cracks develop, and
these, as in the case of certain other persistent and chronic
diseases such as tuberculosis, finally heal up, after passing
through certain intermediate stages (atheromatose), by sclero-
sis or calcification.

This distinction is no matter of hair splitting, but a very im-
portant difference, because in the first place any infection,
poisoning, mental depression or metabolistic disorder must be
examined with a view to discovering whether they cause a weak-
ening of the arterial walls and a weakening of the muscular
tissue, and secondly because it obviates the foolish effort to dis-
solve the chalk in the arteries, and indicates that the exact
opposite is the effect to be aimed at — ^namely, the assistance of
the organism in its task of bringing about the requisite calcifica-
tion, Here is a field on which vitamin treatment can prove very
successful.

To conclude, the problem of blood pressure is a very compli-
cated one, and it is impossible to go into full details here. The
layman should be satisfied with the general, and somewhat over-
simplified, explanation I have given him here, and for the rest
he should be content to let the doctors rack their brains over the
problem.

I take ity then, that yon regard the science of medicine as something
indivisible?

Yes, I most certainly do. Medicine is as indivisible as the
physical functions themselves. Of course, there are functional
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A Doctor's Dialogues

units, such as the digestive organs, the urinary system, and the
central nervous system, which can be more or less delimited, but
they, too, can function only in co-operation and co-ordination
with all other parts of the organism as a whole. Unfortunately a
limited understanding of this whole problem, a failure to appre-
ciate it as a whole, has produced a tendency to regard these
various organs as though they were separate entities, and to
treat them as such. This attitude has led to the over-specializa-
tion of the medical profession in our day. The part was, so to
speak, torn out of its context and regarded as something inde-
pendent of the whole. In the search after the individual bricks
— and beyond even those units to the atoms of which they are
composed — the building itself — ^that is, the human organism as
a functioning whole — ^has suffered neglect. By paying too much
attention to the grain of sand, the pillars of the edifice, its statues,
and in the end the whole Parthenon has been lost to view. OiE*
course, the whole Parthenon is made up of innumerable grains of
sand, but innumerable grains of sand add up to the Parthenon
only when they are harmoniously brought together to that end.

Naturally, the study of the basic elements of any edifice is use-
ful and even necessary, and it is not that study against which I
protest, provided that the knowledge so won is organically con-
nected with the whole to which the elements add up. A watch
consists of so many wheels, cogs, springs and other specialized
individual parts, but the watch is only a watch when these parts
are there in proper relation to each other, when they form to-
gether an organic integral whole. The elements are highly
interesting, but their real significance is achieved only in their
co-ordination in the watch as a whole. Thus in medical practice
specialization is a danger, because it tends to an isolated study
of individual organs and a neglect of the relation between the
individual organs and the organism as a whole. The all-essen-
tial correlation should never be overlooked. For this reason I
am firmly convinced that the only justified speciality in medical
practice is for a man to be no specialist.

Various curative methods are highly specialized; what about that?

It is certainly confusing to the layman to hear of so many
different methods of treatment as allopathy, homoeopathy,

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Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

nature treatment, serotherapy, chemotherapy, electrotherapy,
physiotherapy, psychotherapy and God knows what other
opathies and therapies. However, that is merely an indication
of the choice available, and it certainly does not mean that
therapy falls into so many membra disjecta, A good doctor must
be eclectic, and of all the methods at his disposal he must choose
the one which promises the best success in the particular case he
is treating. For this reason it is absolutely false and deplorable to
talk as though there were ‘‘right” medicine and “wrong” medi-
cine, and something entitled to the name “orthodox” or “school
medicine”. Everything which contributes best and most
speedily to the true aim of medicine, healing, is medicine.

The oldest form of medicine was popular medicine in a
religious cloak, and the medicine we practise to-day is still firmly
rooted in this old medicine. It is deplorable arrogance to dis-
miss the origins of medicine with contempt and contumely.
Almost all our drugs have been passed on to us by some old
savage tribe, and there is no need whatever to gloss over or be
ashamed of this fact. We shall continue to help ourselves liber-
ally from this old source of popular medicine. We learnt the use
of quinine from the Peruvians. Hydrotherapy came from the
simple shepherd Priesnitz. Even hormone treatment was known
in old Indian and Chinese medicine. Medical research receives
its impetus from sickness, and the correctness of the measures
adopted for treatment will always be judged by their practical
results. The medical theoretician without practical experience
is much worse off than the practical medical man without theo-
retical education.

Some people are born with a feeling for the art of medicine,
and one often finds them amongst quacks. They scratch around
for a grain of corn like a blind hen — and sometimes they find it.
Generally speaking they are ignorant, and therefore they often
make mistakes, and for this reason their activities should be kept
under strict control, but when their observation and experience
does result in something of value it should not be a priori re-
jected out of stupid, dogmatic professional pride, as is so often
the case, but taken, tested and applied.

When I am called in to treat sick children I always consult the
mother first, because she very often knows by instinct what is
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A Doctor^ s Dialogues

right. We condemn homoeopatiiists, Christian Scientists or
chiropractitioners for their one-sided insistence on their par-
ticular methods as the only true ones, but it is no less stupid for
so-called orthodox practitioners to put on blinkers and cling
equally obstinately to what is known as school medicine. Of
course, training and knowledge consolidate the basis on which
we stand in our medical practice, and therefore a properly
qualified medical man has a much better chance of getting at
the truth, but this must not prevent us as properly qualified
medical men from respecting the line of thought of others and
using their achievements together with our own.

I thought the House of Commons was right when it refused
to countenance the setting up of a faculty for chiropractitioners.
This discipline is still in its rudimentary stages, too little study
has as yet been given to it, and the ranks of its practitioners are
still sprinkled too freely with dubious and unreliable elements ;
but at the same time I was sorry that no university chair of
chiropractice was established, for then medical students would
have had a chance of becoming acquainted with and them-
selves practising the manipulations used with extraordinary
virtuosity by some chiropractitioners and bonesetters. In this
case the narrow professional pride of medical men opposed
something practical and useful.

What do you think of the practise of homoeopathy?

Homceopathy has its own history. It has affected orthodox
medicine like a ferment. The founder of homoeopathy, Hahne-
mann, who died a hundred years ago, was certainly a great
personality and far ahead of his time. In his younger days he
went in for chemistry and developed methods of discovering the
presence of poisons in the human body, so that he can also be
regarded as one of the great pioneers of forensic medicine.
Later on he began to put special ideas of his own into practice,
and undoubtedly he met with considerable success. His case
histories were models of their kind, and showed profound
knowledge, detailed observation and great conscientiousness.
As a chemist his attention had been brought to certain phen-
omena which to-day we summarize as catalysis. The study of the
changing or speeding up of reactions by the presence of minute

509

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

quantities of metallic and other substances which do not them-
selves take part in the reaction, catalysis, has developed in our
day into an important branch of science. Was it this which
caused him to favour the use of minute dosages, or was it really
the belief that means should be applied which produced similar
symptoms to the sickness to be treated? Or was it both? It is
not easy to decide from his writings. But one way or the other,
the recognized so-called Schultze-Arndt principle for medica-
mental effects lays it down that medicaments given in small
doses have the contrary effect to the same medicaments given in
large doses, and it therefore provides the scientific justification
for Hahnemann’s views.

Most certainly, homoeopathy has committed a sin of omission
in not scientifically developing the lessons taught by Hahne-
mann. Homoeopathy picked the currants out of the bun, so to
speak, and did, nothing whatever to develop the lessons of its
founder still further. Otherwise it need never have let vaccina-
tion, immunotherapy and serum treatment be taken out of its
hands. All these medical disciplines operate with even smaller
dosages and still higher dilutions, where that is at aU possible,
than those prescribed by Hahnemann himself. Incidentally, it
is an error to believe that homoeopathists always operate with
very small dosages of “potentials”, for sometimes they prescribe
very strong poisons in quantities which, although they are abso-
lutely sm^l, are nevertheless greater than an allopath would
care to prescribe without misgiving.

As far as I am concerned, I have taken what I considered use-
ful from the armoury of the homoeopathists, and I have nothing
in principle against homoeopathy, though I have sometimes had
to cross swords with individual homoeopathists. Others, on the
contrary, have been valued and highly-respected colleagues.
Hahnemann did what many other successful men have done, he
took to himself a young wife at an advanced age, eighty to be
precise. That is not a good thing, it falsifies a man’s whole
life — ^and greatly increases his expenses. To meet these greatly
increased expenses Hahnemann opened up a fashionable prac-
tice, and all hysterical Paris streamed into his consulting rooms.
In this latter period of his life I am convinced he obtained
greater success by the suggestive effect of his name and person-
510

A Doctofs Dialogues

ality than by his knowledge. Unfortunately homoeopathy
recruits its adherents primarily from amongst those who have
more confidence in faith than in knowledge. And amongst
these the main contingent comes from the ranks of the upper ten
thousand. They give the tone, and they are followed by mobs of
others from snobbery rather than conviction. In consequence
the specialized existence of this particular discipline is assured
for an indefinite period.

I made the acquaintance of homoeopathy whilst I was still a
student. Budapest was the only university which had a chair of
homoeopathy. My teachers were Professor Bakody and Profes-
sor Balogh. Professor Balogh was recalled to my mind a little
while back in connection with the epochal discovery of penicillin
by the bacteriologist Fleming. This substance, a vegetable
mould product, is very effective against certain infections.
Professor Balogh used to treat intestinal catarrh with diluted
extract of meat mould. Later on I came into contact with Dr
Roehrig of Paderborn, who was the doyen of homoeopathists in
Germany at the time. Patients from all parts of the world filled
his consulting-rooms and he polished them all oS with the same
curt brusquerie. As soon as a patient entered his inner sanctum
he would snort: ‘‘Sit down”. And if the patient, indignant at
being hectored, then pointed out that she was the Countess so-
and-so, he would snap still more fiercely, “Then take two chairs”.

Roehrig was a thoroughly experienced and conscientious
practitioner. As early as 1899 he had built his own Roentgen
apparatus, and with it he was able to make rapid and accurate
diagnoses. By 191 1 he had fallen ill of a Roentgen cancer, and
he came to me and became my patient. I treated him for many
months — ^not with homoeopathic methods, and he was very glad
to take the alleviating medicaments I prescribed in full and
effective dosages. From that time on my reputation amongst
the homoeopathists was firmly established. Thanks to Roehrig’s
obvious confidence in me, they came to regard me as a sort of
super-homoeopathist, and I was often called in by homoeo-
pathists as a consiliarius. They were a very mixed lot, and later
on I had difficulty in keeping some of them at arm’s length, but
at least I had a unique opportunity of seeing their cards face up
on the table.

Sir

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

We hear a great deal about suggestion nowadays; what do you think
about it?

Most of what can be said about treatment by suggestion as
such is also true of Christian Science. Any mental concentra-
tion on- a definite organ can influence its functioning just as
surely as sensory impressions can. Disgust causes a man’s
stomach to turn over. Fright chills the blood in his veins.
Elation makes the heart beat stronger. Mortification can cause
the gall-bag to run over, and so on. In the same way concentra-
tion, confidence and ‘Taith” can work “wonders” in a suitable
subject. People who have been cured in this way then club to-
gether to form a society of enthusiastic propagandists and
proselytizers — ^until some close and beloved relative who might
have been saved by medical intervention dies of cancer, or some-
thing of the sort. This does mean that I am opposed to the use
of suggestion ; in fact I have sent more than one of my psycho-
neurotic patients to places like Lourdes or to Christian Science
practitioners. Sometimes such methods can cure patients where
my own efforts have failed, and that is all that matters. How-
ever, these are exceptional cases, and I must confess that I feel
more confident and comfortable when I can stand with two legs
firmly on the solid basis of proved medical science, and I consent
to leave this basis only when it is obviously unable to carry me
any longer.

And what about psychoanalysis?

Someone has said that the doctors envied the priests the
institution of the confessional and so they invented psycho-
analysis. As not only the evil deed, but the very thought of the
evil deed — evil thought — ^falls within the province of the confes-
sional, the Catholic Church has been practising psychoanalysis
for a good many years now, just as the first quacks undoubtedly
practised psychotherapy. Both saved the honour of those
doctors who healed thanks to their personal influence, their
power of conviction and their suggestive force. Before the
honourable establishment of psychotherapy their jealous col-
leagues were greatly inclined to dub them charlatans.

If we regard mind and body as two equal partners in the
mutual relations we call life, then we can certainly not regard
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A Doctor^ $ Dialogues

the treatment of the mind, or soul, as superfluous. The greatest
achievement of psychological research is that it has brought
some sort of order into the previous chaos of our psychological
knowledge and our methods of psychological treatment. With
this it made it possible to separate the chaff from the wheat, and
to raise the confused medley to the status of a science. One of
its pioneers was Eduard von Hartmann who drew general
attention to the unconscious automatism of life with his ' ‘Physi-
ology of the Unconscious’’ around 1880. The originator of
psychoanalysis was the typical Vienna coffee-house addict,
Breuer. My teacher, Kraus, knew Breuer personally, and had
spent many evenings with him in the Vienna cafes discussing
the subject. Breuer was a man of great intellectual ability and
richness of ideas. He published some of his conclusions, but
most of them he let fall in the cafes of Vienna for the sparrows
to gobble up. He attached great importance to letting a hys-
terical patient talk himself out, and he documented the bene-
ficial results of such treatment.

It is no denigration of Freud to say that it was the germ of
Breuer’s ideas he snapped up and developed into full bloom. At
first Freud suffered many humiliations at the hands of orthodox
medical men. His views led to his, shall we say mildly, “re-
moval” from the membership list of the old-established and
honoured medical association “Gesellschaft der Aerzte”. I was
elected a corresponding member of this society, and at one
of its banquets, at a time when Freud’s fame was already firmly
established, I dared to question the President of the association
under whose auspices Freud’s membership had been dispensed
with — though I waited until we had both had a glass or two of
Gumpoldskirchner first. This was Professor Wagner-Jauregg,
world famous for his research into thyroid-gland diseases, the
discoverer of the malaria infection treatment for progressive
paralysis, and Nobel Prize winner. With the frankness of a
jovial Styrian peasant he declared : “Well, you know, a chap
doesn’t get to my age without having done a lot of silly things,
and when I went for Freud in those days, that was one of the
silliest things I ever did. And that’s all there is to it.”

Medical men are a curious lot. In their heart of hearts they
are very much inclined to imagination and fantasy, but they are

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

ashamed to admit it. Passionless exactitude finds recognition
before the most valuable fantasy. In consequence they are very
keen on statistics. There is hardly a medical dissertation which
is not well sprinkled* with statistics. Freud had no statistics, and
in consequence the medical publishers were unwilling to print
his stuff. It was a long time, a very long time, before he won
medical recognition for his work. He made his career in the
beginning thanks' primarily to his ability as a writer. His first
public recognition came not from the medical profession, but
from the literary world, whose leaders crowned his writings with
the Goethe Prize in Frankfort-on-Main. Only then did the
medical world begin to pay proper attention to his work, and it
can truthfully be said that Freud spread his daring ideas
throughout the world by his masterly dialectic. His writings are
often poised on the finest balance between the sublime and the
ridiculous, but he always retained his balance, and in the end he
was taken seriously.

If the criterion of genius is the general effect of a thought, then
there is no doubt that to-day there is hardly a field of science,
hardly a sphere of human thought, which has not had to revise
its ideas in the light of Freud’s principles. From this point of
view one can class Freud with Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Kant,
Darwin, Nietzsche and Einstein. Perhaps the mention of
Nietzsche’s name in this connection may appear inappropriate.
It is not altogether so, I think, for the logical and ruthless pur-
suit of the Nietzschean ideal led to bestiality in human relation-
ships, whereas Freud, with his better understanding of humanity,
opens up the way to reconciliation, and in the end it may lead to
a more tolerant and a better world. There is no doubt that to-
day our moral ideas and our jurisprudence are both being
subject to revision in the light of Freud’s ideas.

It is possible to disagree concerning the therapeutic value of
psychoanalysis, but one thing is quite indisputable: with the
help of psychoanalysis we can deal successfully with certain
psychical symptoms. However, what is the use of disposing of
symptoms if the constitution, the basis on which the symptoms
have appeared, remains unchanged? In the best case another
symptom will appear, and the utmost we shall have attained
will be the replacement of one symptom by another and, perhaps,

A Doctors Dialogues

less disagreeable one. At the same time we must not under-
estimate the dangers connected with psychoanalysis. It can
cause trouble. In particular there is a very real danger that the
patient may fall into a dependent relation to his analyst, and
that is not so easily remedied. Just as the physical body is
protected by several defensive strata, so is the soul, and one
should make the attempt to penetrate beyond them only in
cases of extreme urgency. With ordinary physical surgical
operations the normal condition is never completely restored.
In the best case a scar remains. And so psychological operations
bring about changes, and this should be risked only when the
stake is worth it. Mental wounds can also become infected and
complications can arise. Therefore the analyst should not pene-
trate more deeply than is absolutely necessary, and as far as
possible he should confine himself to the focus of the trouble.
The Jung methods of complex determination offer us a better
chance of placing the exploratory finger on the very seat of the
trouble and thus localizing^ the operation.

The analysis of dreams must also give rise to misgiving. The
dream reveals the complex in its sheerest form. The dream is
the unconscious association of physical or mental distress, and
accordingly it becomes either a compelled reflex or a wish
dream. It must not be forgotten that in sleep not only do the
organic functions continue to operate, but also the brain, al-
though in sleep it operates under the surface of normal con-
sciousness. When the accumulation of stimulation reaches up to
the surface of consciousness we awaken. Consider this process in
connection with the gradual filling of the bladder. As I have
already pointed out, we are woken up by a physical need. Of
course, there are bed-wetters, but in such cases either the level
of consciousness lies too low or the sphincter muscles are weak.

The sexual dream is a typical reflex dream, a purely regula-
tive automatism of the organism. Every organic function has a
psychic superstructure, and in the same way every sickness has
its own specific psyche. These are certain general principles
which are no longer the subject of dispute. But we immediately
get into difficulties when we have to go from the general to the
particular in the case of purely individual psychological associa-
tions in a dream. It is one of Freud’s great services that he has

515

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

dared to penetrate into this field. I marvel at his courage even
when I am often unable to follow him in his vague assumptions
on so many points. However, the great thing is that a beginning
has been made and a new field is now open to scientific investiga-
tion.

What do you think of surgical intervention ?

Surgery is a very much over-rated branch of medical science.
It tends to leave the ideal path of medical effort rather than
keep to it, and it is not sufficiently conservative in the true sense.
The highest task of medicine is to keep the human body in its
natural shape and to natural functions, and not to mutilate it as
surgery does. The successes of surgery live on to talk about
themselves; the failures are quickly buried. With cleanliness
and blood stilling almost any surgical daring may be under-
taken. The human organism is very patient, and it adapts itself
to new conditions with extraordinary facility. It adapts itself in
the same way to operative mutilations — and it often succeeds in
doing so despite tixe surgeons.

Surgeons have contributed relatively little to the development
of medical science, though most of them regard themselves as
the head and fount of medical creation, just as the pathological
anatomist regards himself as supreme in medicine. I have
known most of the great surgeons of my day, and they were all
beneficiaries of bacteriological, physiological and pharmaco-
logical discoveries. Thanks to these discoveries they became
‘^Titans of Medicine’’ — ^without having played any greater role
than that of competent craftsmen. Hardly one of the many
great achievements of medical science is due to a surgeon. As
craftsmen and technicians I am prepared to raise my hat to
them and be thankful to them for their assistance when the
worst comes to the worst, but that is all I demand of a surgeon.
For medical purposes a doctor certainly need never turn for
assistance to a surgeon. I readily admit that I have known
many surgeons whose personality was impressive, but I hardly
knew one whose knowledge was in any way out of the ordinary.
Surgery is applied science — the applied science of others.

In uttering this criticism of surgery and surgeons I have had
the leading surgeons of what might be termed the heroic age of

A Doctor" s Dialogues

surgery before my mind’s eye : men like Billroth in Vienna, the
father of Central European surgery. He was the first to attempt
an operation for cancer of the stomach — ^but only after the
chemistry of the stomach had been explained by Heidenhain
and van den Velden with the assistance of Kussmaul’s stomach
pump, and after Boas had demonstrated the presence of lactic
acid in the stomach cancer. Billroth’s successor was Eiselsberg,
also of Vienna. Encouraged by the research work of Brown-
Sequard, he proceeded to operate on the thyroid gland, though
without success, because he removed not only the thyroid, but
also the para-thyroid gland, being a good and conscientious
operator, whereas Kocher in Bern, who was not such a conscien-
tious technician, failed to remove it altogether. Kocher’s test
animals remained alive because he left their para- thyroid beliind,
but he received the Nobel Prize for all that. Griesinger, Munck,
Wernicke and Anton had made a thorough study of the brain
before Bergmann dared to operate. Lord Lister first mastered
the bacteriology of Pasteur and then applied sterilization to
surgery with results that astounded the world. Others went
still further in their attempts to prevent infection, and it was
Mikulicz who first introduced mouth and nose covering for
surgeons.

Bergmann’s successor, August Bier, always struck me as a
medical illiterate. He prided himself on being "'a man of iron
logic”. Perhaps he was, but unfortunately his premisses were
false, as is the case with most quacks. What quacks say is
usually wrong, but what they do is sometimes brilliantly right.
Sauerbruch’s pneumatic chamber was an error, just as were his
other proposals for pulmonary surgery. Hermann Strauss,
Alexander Koranyi and Paul Friedrich Richter worked on func-
tional kidney diagnosis, and on the basis of their results Israel in
Berlin performed his kidney operations. De Bassini in Padua
w^as an anatomist. Apart from those I have mentioned I have
known a host of others, but only Nicoladoni of Graz stands out
in my memory. It was he who had the brilliant idea of displac-
ing living muscles to perform new tasks in the lame. But even
this, although a great achievement, was more of a technical one.

Perhaps after all this it may be thought that I do not recognize
the real blessings of surgery and the technical progress it has

517

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

made in recent years. This is not the case. I am perfectly will-
ing to give surgery its full due, but what I will not do is join in
the chorus wh^ praises the surgeon as the crown of medical
creation. Such praise is unearned. The surgeon must be satis-
fied with that modest place which his own achievements in the
cause of medicine truly entitles him to. The surgeon is a good
and useful soldier of medicine, and his job is to carry out the
operations the General Staff of medicine has decided on. He is
not the beginning, he is the end.

What do you think of the mystic and transcendental forces which are
said to play a role in medicine ?

I certainly have one or two interesting and amusing mem-
ories. On many afternoons in Rome I took part in spiritistic
seances in a special room in the Hotel Quirinal. The life and
soul of these seances was Princess Odescalchi, an old lady who
lived in Rome and was very keen on keeping well in with her
forebears. She conjured up the souls of her dead-and-gone rela-
tives whenever she could, and the table would jolt, shudder and
jump in time to the orders of whatever uncle or other relative
from the other side was appearing that day. Quite apart from
the Odescalchi family, and particularly its Austrian line, there
was hardly a great figure of history from Nero to Napoleon
whose eternal rest was not disturbed by this persistent old lady.
All of them were assumed to have a knowledge of current events
and had to undergo an appropriate examination. They were
not always pleased at this, and they often expressed their annoy-
ance violently: the table would buck like a yearling being
saddled for the first time. Sometimes the scene would be so wild
that we gave each other unintentional bruises, but it was all
taken in good part and no complaints were made. The amuse-
ment was worth a bruised shin or two.

Spiritism was all the rage in those days. The movement really
started in Sweden, where for the first time it had proved possible
to hypnotize suitable mediums. Psychiatrists then adopted this
method, and the human imagination exaggerated successes and
materializations to wild and fantastic lengths. The whole of
Europe fell victim to the suggestion of suggestibility, and France
in particular went positively hysterical. Each country had its

5i8

A Doctor's Dialogues

famous mediums, and both honest and dishonest elements
mixed together in this witches’ sabbath. For the scientist a new
field of investigation had undoubtedly opened up, particularly
when the objective and highly reputable physiologist of the
Sorbonne, Charles Richet, and the equally serious scientist,
Marcelin Berthelot, the inventor of calorimetiy, pronounced a
decided non liquet in the case of spiritism.

The French Academy appointed a commission of three, of
which Richet and Berthelot were members, to investigate the
question. To remove their investigations as far as possible from
all outside influences they were all shipped, together with their
medium, to the Chateau dTf near Marseilles, made famous in
Dumas’ novel ‘‘The Count of Monte Cristo”. The members of
the commission witnessed various strange phenomena, such as
levitation, spontaneous winds, strange noises, etc., none of
which were amenable to ordinary explanation despite all the
tests and precautionary measures adopted. They were unable
to come to any satisfactory conclusions, and in a cautious report
they admitted that they considered the existence of a fourth
dimension to be a possibility.

And down to this day theirs is the only reasonable attitude to
take in this question. It would be deplorable arrogance in us to
assume that our knowledge of existing energies is already at such
a pitch that no further development is possible. I think there is
little doubt that we shall live to witness more than one epoch-
making discovery in this respect. How much would have been
left of the signs and wonders of the ancients if they had been
acquainted, with electricity and radiation? One thing is clear:
the more science advances in its knowledge the less room there
will be for “wonders”. Something, the last something, will al-
ways remain, however. To adopt a negative standpoint and to
declare that everything is humbug, is as false and unscientific as
to accept all the spiritistic phenomena as proved.

It is too easy to point to the wireless mast as an explanation of
telepathic phenomena. Such phenomena are not everyday
occurrences, but quite exceptional. There are certainly control-
lable telepathic communications which work with a broadcast-
ing and receiving system, and on which the continued existence
of worlds depends. One need only point to the epoch-making

519

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

discoveries of Favre in connection with insect life. Here we can
see, for instance, that there is a mass consciousness of the species
as a whole in the butterfly world which not only maintains con-
tact between the two sexes, but directs their whole life and
activities. Science has not the faintest shadow of an explanation
for these experimentally controllable and reproducible phen-
omena.

Anything we cannot explain satisfactorily with the knowledge
available to us is embarrassing. For small souls the best way out
is to deny the existence of anything we don’t know all about.
But riddles cannot be eradicated from the world by the arrogant
decree of those who are unable to solve them. Instincts, afiini-
ties and tropisms all go beyond the bounds of our present
scientific knowledge. No one knows how forces are transferred
here, but we are quite satisfied because we have found a name
for the process.

Undoubtedly there are those who make capital out of credu-
lity in all mysterious things, and when such charlatans are
exposed the little positivists triumph. They jnmp at the oppor-
tunity to damn the whole thing because some individual has
brought discredit on it. Abuse of spiritism by unscrupulous
mediums has always taken place. In Italy, for instance, there
was the medium Eusapia Palladino. She was presented to us
by the Roman Professor of Physiology, Luciani, his friend, a
professor of bio-chemistry in Naples, and Barsini, the famous
reporter of the Corriere della Sera. It was an impressive sight to
see the curtains billowing out (although all doors and windows
were closed) and the chairs dancing. Everything went accord-
ing to plan in the seance before the two sceptical University
professors. But the good Madame Eusapia was later exposed
by Barsini, who demonstrated that the hand of Napoleon
conjured up by a member of the audience was in reality the
foot of Madame Eusapia herself.

However, such abuse by unscrupulous mediums is not
convincing proof that unknown phenomena do not exist. Once
again Hamlet was right : “There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. The
miracle, according to Goethe, was the favourite child of belief.
Perhaps he is right, but in the future it must be the still more
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A Doctor's Dialogues

favoured child of science in the sense that much attention must
be bestowed on it. Pascal favoured the golden mean: ^^Deux
exces: exclure la raison; rCadmettre que la raison" \ But Pascal would
have been wrong to suggest that the two excesses were of equal
enormity. To exclude reason is far worse than to admit only
reason — despite Bergson.

The reading of the hand, chiromancy, character-reading
from the handwriting, and clairvoyance are phenomena which
are not necessarily transcendental. There is little doubt that
there is a relation between the character and the form of the
hand. By careful study, such as that conducted by Dr. Char-
lotte Wolf and laid down in her writings, chiromancy can be
given a more positive basis. The form of the hand is just as
characteristic for certain constitutional peculiarities as the
expression of the face, or, indeed, any other physical charac-
teristic, The ground begins to become a bit slippery under the
feet when on the basis of an often true proverb, “Everyman is
his own lucksmith”, we proceed to form conclusions as to
character from morphological indications, and then, still
further, to draw conclusions as to coming events.

Handwriting is undoubtedly the expression of unconscious
happenings. Handwriting can betray both a bodily and a
mental state. Trousseau spoke of an “asthmatic writing” and a
“heart disease writing”. The handwriting of a paralytic is of
value in diagnosis. But all such indications must be treated with
caution and without prejudice, or mistakes will easily occur. I
can remember one such case — an amusing one, as it happened.
Whilst I was a young assistant a colleague of mine named
Schittenhelm had the task of placing the most interesting cases
in the polyclinic before our chief, together with the diagnosis.
He was accustomed to write the name and other particulars of
the patient on a piece of paper and pass it over with the whis-
pered diagnosis. In one case the diagnosis was “paralysis”. Our
Professor Kraus misunderstood him on this occasion, took the
piece of paper, put it under the epidiascope and proceeded to
demonstrate to us all the characteristic attributes of a para-
lytic’s handwriting — to our great delight and to Schittenhelm’s
horror.

In all cases our guiding principle must be “without preju-

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

dice”. Very few people have the gift of interpreting the delicate
signs of psychological processes objectively. I believe in the
possibilities of graphology, but I have little confidence in most
graphologists. A sixth sense is necessary for accurate results. A
graphologist who certainly seemed to possess a sixth sense was
Raphael Scheermann of Cracow. He was a peculiar character
and not particularly blessed intellectually or imaginatively, nor
did his appearance suggest any out-of-the-ordinary ability.
When he was given a graphological problem to solve he would
fall into a sort of trance with the writing before him, and in that
trance his enormous capacities for accurate interpretation were
revealed. The writing on the paper before him seemed almost
to open up the secret places of the heart of the writer, the secret
places of the heart and the innermost recesses of the brain.
Letters written by people who were total strangers to him but
well known to us were placed before him, and without hesita-
tion he described them as we knew them — and very often far
beyond our knowledge.

I became very friendly with him, and from time to time I
would drop him a line, usually post-cards. Back would come
long letters of careful analysis — all based on the few lines I had
written. He analysed my experiences and told me what I
should best do and best leave undone in the psychological state
which my cards showed me to be in to his unerring eye. On the
basis of the handwriting of my chauffeur, who had been with me
for fourteen years and who enjoyed my complete confidence, he
exposed the man as a crook and revealed all the tricks he had
been up to, I could write many pages about Scheermann and
his great gifts : how he intervened in complicated legal disputes,
how he influenced men and their fates, how he was consulted by
people from all parts of the world, even by courts of justice, and
so on, but that would lead to a monograph about Scheermann,
and as interesting as that would be, all I am interested in here is
how graphology might be used to assist in medical diagnoses.

Scheerman himself wrote books, and some of them have been
translated into English. I have read them all, but after having
read them I am more than ever convinced that his ability was
purely intuitive and that he was not in a position to teach any-
one else to do the same. The basis of graphology is too insecure

A Doctor's Dialogues

for the moment to permit of its being learnt systematically as a
science. Scheermann was a unique phenomenon, but that is no
basis for a science. Incidentally he was an ardent Polish
patriot, and despite the warnings of his friends he went back to
his beloved Cracow. I have heard nothing of him since the out-
break of war. Perhaps the Nazis have also destroyed this genius.

You suggested earlier that if Freud had not made sex his point of
departure he might have achieved still more. How do you stand to the
sexual problem ?

If we regard the aim of life as first to preserve oneself and then
to perpetuate the species, it is clear that the sexual problem
must be regarded as at least one half of man’s earthly existence.
The sexual problem is therefore worthy of an important place in
our investigations. Above all, sexuality should be freed from the
old mystic veil in which it has too long been wrapped. Society
must cease placing its taboo on attempts to solve the problem.
Sexual secrecy is the hotbed of immorality. Sexual science — ^we
can already speak of the systematic work to bring light into this
vexed problem as a science — has made great progress in recent
years, but owing to the prudeiy and prejudice of society it has
been difficult to put the knowledge gained to practical effect.
The biggest triumph of the women’s movement was that it suc-
ceeded in securing recognition for the equality of the sexes.
Oriental subjugation, which was by no means confined to the
Orient, has been brought to an end in the civilized West;
women are no longer slaves. And, what is more, they are no
longer old : the old lady with bonnet and bugles has disappeared.
Woman has won the right to live her life to the full according to
her desires and needs. In fact, the process has even gone so far
that a new class of male prostitute has arisen. I don’t mean the
homosexual prostitute, but the gigolo, who has become almost
as much an institution as his female counterpart. This is not an
expression of moral judgment, but a simple statement of fact,
and it is not the least use for prudery to shake its head : the fact
remains.

The whole sexual problem would be very much simplified if
the sexual act were a mere necessity instead of being an act of
desire. In the animal world, with its more or less seasonal urges,

523

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

the sexual act is a simple reproductive act. This is not the case
with human beings, who are privileged by the possession of
reason. A human being has an advantage over the animal in
that he can impose inhibitions on himself. He is moral when his
social inhibitions are stronger than his sexual urge, and he is
immoral when his sexual urge is stronger than his inhibitions.

If a man is hungry and he steals bread, the motive is so
extenuating that the act goes almost without punishment, but
the law is not prepared to show the same tolerance towards the
illegal satisfaction of the sexual urge, be it ever so great. In the
one case the action has no further consequences ; in the other it
might have. From this it results that sexual relations need some
authoritative control; they must be regulated. However, such
control should limit itself to the protection of an unwilling
partner and to the maintenance of everyday morality. In other
words, if the sexual act is performed to the detriment of no
other person, if it is conducted in suitable privacy, and if it
offends no feelings of public morality, the law has no cause to
interfere. All these conditions are most naturally fulfilled in the
institution of marriage, but they can also be quite satisfactorily
fulfilled outside the bonds of lawful wedlock, and as disagree-
able as the thought may be to Church and State, long, long
experience has shown that extra-marital sexual relations cannot
easily be prohibited or even morally outlawed.

One of the cardinal problems which any post-war period
always brings with it lies on this field. The war separated many
married couples, often for very long periods. Will they come
together again, and will the marital ties continue to be borne
willingly and permit the continuation of domestic harmony? In
many cases the circumstances brought about by the war have
led to the formation of new, extra-marital, relations. Deep
and joint experiences have often made these relations stronger
than the old legal ones. The situations created in this way are
of dramatic variety, and often they put the imagination of the
author and the playwright into the shade.

The doctor is faced with his share of the problems created,
and hardly a day passes but that some example presents itself to
him in his consulting-room. War loosens moral bonds, and the
post-war period is likely to be faced with many more such
524

A Doctor's Dialogues

difficulties owing to the spread of a freer conception of sexual
morality. The most common factor which leads to marital
troubles is that two people who have come together in marriage
find that they are really unsuited to each other sexually.
During my Strassbourg days the gynascologist Fehling made a
statistical investigation into the problem of sexual frigidity in
the local female populace. The result was interesting enough to
be quoted. It showed that approximately 30 per cent, of the
women of Alsace were sexually frigid. Another 30 per cent, were
slow to react sexually and difficult to satisfy. About 30 per cent,
were normal in their reaction, whilst the remaining 10 per cent,
were over-sexed. I believe that these proportions may be said
to apply quite generally to the women of civilized countries,
though, of course, there are undoubtedly differences of geo-
graphical and climatic situation, race, nationality and so on,
and these would bring about minor variations as between
category and category. However, the main fact would always
remain, and that is that women are very differently constituted
both in their sexual reactions and in their sexual needs. ’

The natural tendency of women is towards masochism,
whilst the natural tendency of men is towards sadism. In her
love life the woman requires a certain amount of sadism on the
part of her lover. She likes to be ill-treated up to a point, to feel
pain, and she is grateful for it. The man will unconsciously
comply with this requirement of his beloved. As long as these
natural appetites are kept under control, love is a happy affair.
But when such tendencies are perverted or carried to excess,
then tragic conflicts develop. Generally speaking one would not
be far wrong in assuming that when love ceases to be a happy
affair and becomes tragic and elegiac, then the cause is some
lack of sexual suitabihty. The simple fact that people get
divorced should not give rise to prejudice, but should be a warn-
ing that something is wrong on one side or the other — or both.

One of the many difficulties of the sexual relation is that
women, even quite normal women, often develop late as far as
their sexual feelings are concerned. Generally speaking, on the
other hand, the sexual feelings of men are more regular in their
development, though there can be a great disparity in require-
ments as between one man and another. What is lacking in

525

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

most men is mastery in the ars amandi^ an ability which is able to
compensate for a great deal of lag in the feelings of women. The
literature of most countries contains classic examples of advice
in this respect, the best known of which is probably that given
by van Svieten, the founder of clinical science, to the Lorraine
husband of Maria Theresa. Unless the man is an artist in love,
the woman is likely to suffer. The happiness of many marriages
has been assured by this art. There is, I believe, an old English
saying to the effect that if the bedroom isn’t right, not a room in
the house is right. It is very true.

Sexuality should in the last resort be of an altruistic nature ;
the one partner should give as much as he receives. The homo
solitarius is a pitifully egoistic being. No man should be content
with dropping into Cupido’s as a mere bar guest. The richly
decked table of Venus should be enjoyed at leisure. With the
thinking being sexuality is not a mere spinal reflex, as it is with
the frog, who continues to perpetuate his species even after
brain, head and all, has been removed. The spinal centre in
man is subordinate to the brain, which can both inhibit and
stimulate, excite or calm. The thinking man can obtain excita-
tion and he can experience undesirable inhibitions. There is no
greater enemy of sexuality than excessive brain work, or worry.
The best and most effective aphrodisiac is physical and mental
serenity. Sexuality exists on the surplus energy of the body. If
that energy is expended in other ways, in excessive physical
exercise, for instance, then very little is left for Venus. Perhaps
that was why Nero regarded coitus as the only form of gym-
nastics suitable for a gentleman, other physical exercise being
fit only for warriors and slaves.

There is a prejudice of long standing which affects to regard
sexuality as an affair of mature years only. Sexuality in child-
hood and in old age is generally regarded as being decently non-
existent in the one case and disgusting and improper in the
other. One of Freud’s great services to the cause of sex enlighten-
ment was his discovery of the indisputable existence of sexuality
in childhood. One of the most valuable and illuminating of all
his analyses was that of a five-year-old boy. Nowadays there is
very little doubt left that sexuality is born with us and stays with

us in one form or the other to the end of our days. The narrow-
526

A Doctors Dialogues

ness of the old prejudice is due perhaps to the fact that sexuality
is identified with the sexual act. This need not necessarily be so.
Male potency and female ovulation represent only one part of
the functions of the sexual glands. Potency in the man can
decline and, indeed, disappear, with advancing years, whilst
the woman may lose her ovular capacity, but in neither case
does sexual desire necessarily disappear as well.

Nietzsche has parodied a Latin tag into ^"Ut desint vires,
tamen es laudanda voluptas'\ When strength departs, lust
remains. The function of the sexual glands are by no means
exhausted with the production of the sperma and their ejacula-
tion in the sexual act. This is certainly their specific function,
but they have other and more general functions which affect the
well-being of the whole organism. Consider the common
results of castration : the voice changes, the hairs of the beard
fall out, fatty tissue begins to accumulate around the hips, flat
feet and knock knees develop, and so on — not to mention various
fundamental mental and spiritual changes.

There has been much dispute about whether these general
functions are also carried out by the specific sex glands. Steinach
believed in the so-called intermediate gland, and the operation
recommended by him consisted in the surrender of the capacity
to reproduce by the severance of the spermatic cord in order to
encourage this ^^intermediate gland” to increased activity. The
same operation is alleged to change homosexuals into hetero-
sexuals and to increase the potentia cmndu The enthusiasm which
once greeted Steinach’s theories has now died away because in
practice the hopes founded on his operation proved deceptive,
but, despite this, Steinach’s great services to the cause of sex
investigation remain, and he certainly opened up new avenues
of inquiry. Voronoff is in a different category altogether. His
transplantation of monkey glands was a deliberate swindle from
the outset. He was not so ignorant as not to know that foreign
tissue is completely absorbed by the human organism, and that
by absorption it necessarily lost its original function. I made
this same statement at the time of the International Physio-
logical Congress in Stockholm in 1926, and the Svenska Dagbladet^
whose reporter interviewed me, published the interview with
the still blunter title "‘Voronoff swindlaren”.

527

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

Perhaps, on the whole, sexual investigation has been happier
with regard to women. The Ashheim-Zondek pregnancy re-
action in urine has opened up a great field of ^'oestron” investiga-
tion, and considerable success has already been attained in the
treatment of disturbances in the female germ glands. This
treatment sometimes works wonders. It is quite common now
for the climacterium to be abolished by this treatment, but the
results in the case of an eighty-four-year-old lady were physio-
logically truly startling. At that advanced age after the treat-
ment she undertook the crossing of the Atlantic in order to be
present at the American premike of a certain actor whose
devoted fan she was.

To raise the discussion to a rather higher and more serious
level, the result of investigations in this direction compel us to
abandon any quietist attitude towards the apparently natural
law of ageing. A successful struggle is now being carried on
against the degeneration of the human organism. If it were
merely a question of renewing the sexual urge and sexual capa-
city in older people, then one might well doubt, for both social
and aesthetic reasons, whether the thing were at all desirable,
but the fact is that the whole organism is radically, almost
revolutionarily, refreshed, the process of metabolism is rejuven-
ated, withering skin becomes young and soft again, the hair and
the toe and finger nails lose their brittleness, and the love of life
and general interest in affairs greatly increase, whilst disagree-
able phenomena due to the decline of the glandular functions,
such as giddiness, depression and so on, disappear as though by
magic. In short, such success is achieved that we cannot close
our eyes to it. As our general attitude to the outside world is a
product of our glandular functions, well-functioning glands
spell happiness and content. Where an improvement in glan-
dular function is achieved disagreeable negative feelings dis-
appear and are replaced by positive and pleasurable feelings.

When a man is normally sexually potent his potency and his
sexual interest are usually balanced, but when a man is impo-
tent this is unfortunately often far from being the case. There
are two quite different kinds of impotence in man; in the one
case sexual interest remains alive, and in the other case it dies.
The last case is the more serious, for it indicates that the func-
52B

A Doctofs Dialogues

tioning of the sexual gland has ceased entirely. This can be the
cause — or the effect — of a nervous breakdown with profound
depression. This vicious circle can sometimes be broken by
prescribing extract of the appropriate glands. Of course, we are
still very far from being able to maintain the full sexual func-
tions in all cases. We are unable to restore completely reactive
and excitation capacity when once it has naturally declined, but
we are in a position to counter the decline of glandular func-
tioning.

Life consists of alternating periods of accumulation and dis-
charge. To put the matter drastically, the discharge takes place
something like an epileptic attack, and it takes place only after a
longer period of accumulation. The witty French philosopher
Ghamfort has described the sexual act as ^'an epileptic fit of
exceptionally brief duration”. A more distant analogy to this
process of accumulation and discharge is provided by hunger :
it develops slowly and is quickly satisfied — just like sexuality,
which develops gradually and is discharged in an orgasm.
There can be no physiological doubt whatever about the great
benefit of such discharges, and the examples I have quoted are
intended to show that in many respects the human organism is
like an accumulator, which can store up power to a certain
limit and then discharge it at need.

At first glance it may seem a little far-fetched to bring to-
gether such disparate things as hunger, sexuality and self-
preservation, but a closer look will show that they are all satis-
fied from resources accumulated slowly or quickly and then
discharged ; resources which, of course, we can exhaust. The
length of the period required for the accumulation is im-
material as far as the mechanism is concerned. The control, too,
is varied, in so far as it is not automatic.

What about contraception^ sterility and fecundity ?

The most fundamental and natural task of humankind is to
reproduce its species. It is still in doubt whether there is such a
thing as the father instinct in nature, but we may not unreason-
ably assume that there is without special proof. Still, it is
exceptional for a man to perform a cosmic and purposeful act in
sexual intercourse — ^for him it is usually no more than an act of

529

Jams, The Story of a Doctor

sexual satisfaction. This is sometimes the case with women too,
but not always. Her sexual desire goes hand in hand with her
desire to conceive. The mother instinct is more peremptory in
its demand for satisfaction than mere sexual desire. It is really a
psychological insult to any woman to have sexual intercourse
with her and at the same time prevent conception. Circum-
stances to-day often demand the sacrifice of conception from the
woman. Under earlier and more primitive circumstances of
life and living the birth of a child was more a plus to the
domestic economy than a minus. Under modern conditions the
birth of a child is economically a burden and one that can be
carried only within certain limits.

You have inquired about contraception without mentioning
birth control; the two things are not the same. One of the
greatest services rendered by the science of biology is that it has
thrown light on the mysteries of conception. From the days of
Aristotle we knew something about conception, but really reli-
able information was provided only with Spallanzani, Johann
Hamm and Leeuwenhoek. If the sperma is prevented from
entering the womb pregnancy cannot take place. Now there
are many and reliable methods of rendering the sperma in-
effective, so that we can prevent conception or let nature take
its course according to our will. With this we are placed in a
position to control the number of children born. I know the
question of the best methods of contraception is a burning one
for many, but I do not propose to go into it here, for considera-
tions of space and suitability. But one thing I will say, and that
is that some sort of State control should be exercised in the
matter, and that nothing should be put on the market without
having previously passed a proper test.

A question on a rather different field is the right of the mother
to take action to prevent birth once conception has taken place.
I propose to speak very frankly here : I consider the prohibition
of voluntary abortion and the accompanying savage legal sanc-
tions as a mockery of individual liberty, as a totally unjustified
limitation of personal freedom. The economic, legal and social
consequences of a birth are unpredictable, and this is particu-
larly true of an illegitimate birth. This is more than ever true
to-day in the state of crisis in which the world finds itself. Un-
530

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

fortunate women who in consequence of inexperience, lack of
money to provide counter-measures, or accident, or what you
will, txave conceived an unwanted foetus are forbidden to rid
themselves of the often disastrous consequences of a momentary
happening. Such unfortunates must pay the penalty if they are
caught breaking the harsh law, whilst innumerable others who
are better placed can do the same thing with impunity. Moral-
ity plays no role in this question.

After the Russian Revolution the authorities abolished the
laws against operative interference to remove unwanted concep-
tions. When I was in Russia women could go to their local
polyclinic and have the simple operation performed without
question. Despite this the birth rate in Soviet Russia continued
to increase. The healthy maternal instinct was not impaired by
permission to prevent the birth of unwanted children. But when
Soviet Russia returned to nationalistic and militaristic ways the
authorities once again introduced laws to protect all and any
conceptions from operative or other interference. On the basis
of my long experience I am firmly convinced that the law is not
effective in preventing abortions. Abortion goes on just the
same, but it goes on in the dark, performed oftentimes with im-
proper and inadequate means, and often to the danger of the
woman concerned. Many, many women have lost their lives in
this way. When this operation is properly performed by trained
doctors the risk to life is negligible. The effective advantage to
the State of the prevailing legal situation is highly problematical.
On the other hand, there are the positive disadvantages of a law
on the Statute Book which cannot be properly enforced. Law
which cannot be properly enforced is axiomatically bad law. In
addition, the present state of the law in this respect makes
valuable citizens into criminals, and opens the door wide to the
cloaca of secret abortions.

The law in this country permits the artificial interruption of
the process of gestation only when the continuation and culmina-
tion of that process involves danger to the life of the prospective
mother. Even in cases where the child is likely to be crippled
physically or mentally by hereditary factors on the paternal side
the law will permit no exception. How much human pain,
suffering and misery could be prevented if the law would adopt

531

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

a more liberal attitude in this question and one more in keeping
with the spirit of our age ! Of course, measures are necessary to
prevent a falling birth-rate, one of whose most frequent causes is
the deliberate practise of birth control, or rather birth preven-
tion, which expresses itself in so many childless marriages and
marriages which produce one child and no more. But the
present harsh and unconscionable law is not an effective means
to do so.

The greatest enemies of sexuality are worry, poverty bringing
with it overwork and under-nourishment, and excessive physical
training. To put it jocularly, sexuality is a half-time job, and it
must be treated with respect as such. It requires serenity and
leisure for its proper pursuit. I have already mentioned that in
Germany in the worst hunger period which followed the first
world war doctors were faced with the alarming phenomenon
that the ovulation of women in the best age for childbirth
ceased, and that sexual desire in men fell away until in many
cases practical impotence resulted. The Rubens women, not
those of Botticelli, are the pre-destined mothers of the race.
Good food and plenty of it is one of the most important condi-
tions for any encouragement of the birth rate. If a wise govern-
ment sees to it that the mass of its citizens are not economically
over-burdened, that they are given the possibility of having a
home of their own and furnishing it comfortably, and that
families with many children are given material assistance in
bearing their burden, then it will see its reward in an automatic
rise in the birth rate.

When couples take on the extra burden of child-bearing and
child-rearing, then the wise State will see that they are materi-
ally compensated for their sacrifice. All sorts of things can be
done in this respect (and, of course, some are being done) :
school fees can be lowered or abolished altogether, education
can be made good and inexpensive, protection can be given
against unemployment, sickness and maternity grants and
similar support can be increased, special protection for mothers
can be legislated for, and so on. Where conditions favour the
founding of a family and ensure its future without worry, then
people will found families and the birth rate will rise. I speak
here as a doctor on the basis of my experience, but, in fact, the
532

A Doctors Dialogues

problem is more of a socio-political and economic one than a
medical one, and therefore I do not propose to go any deeper in-
to this all-important side of the question.

Birth control has no more than a medical-ethical significance,
whereas the other problem of sterility is of great interest from
the purely scientific point of view. I am not referring here to the
common cases of malformation in women which prevent
conception, or the lack of the spermatic cord in men. These are
cases for medical text-books only. No, I mean cases where as
far as one can judge there is no reason why conception should
not take place but nevertheless it does not. The statistics of
childless marriages are alarming. The best brains of our day
are engaged on the problem, and any advice calculated to
further the prospects of conception is welcome. There is one
factor in human sexual relations which militates against concep-
tion, and that is the so-called “human position”, which is no
doubt the commonest in the sexual act as performed by human
beings. If any proof is needed that we are, after all, still “four-
footed animals”, then it is the construction of the genital tract.

Everything goes to indicate that the only truly natural posi-
tion for copulation is what is generally known as the “animal
position” a tergo. Only in this position is the internal abdominal
pressure negative, and only this position ensures the proper
reception of the semen and — ^what is still more important — ^its
retention. In the “human position” the abdominal pressure is
positive and the whole purposeful anatomy of the female
interior is distorted, with the result that conception takes place,
if it does take place, only when this hindrance has been over-
come. It is almost a wonder that conception takes place at all in
this position. When it does take place, as, of course it frequently
does, then it is only because the ways of nature, like those of
God, are inscrutable. There is such an enormously prodigal
ejaculation of spermatozoa that the natural aim of copulation is
often achieved despite the obstacles represented by the “human
position” ; in addition to which, of course, die individual sperma-
tozoon has a life of its own and wriggles vigorously towards its
destined apotheosis. Our slogan in this respect must therefore be
once again, “Back to nature!” Very little consideration is
necessary for any objective person to realize that in the truly

533

Janos i The Story of a Doctor

natural position everything is anatomically in position to facili-
tate the object of copulation, whereas in the so-called “human
position” just everything is anatomically wrong and calculated
to hinder, if not prevent that object.

As early as the fifteenth century we find Jesuit fathers giving
sexual-hygienic advice to their flock. They already knew that
the most favourable time for conception was immediately after
the end of the menstruation period, and that on every sub-
sequent day the likelihood of conception declined, until round
about the seventeenth day it was practically non-existent, and
remained so until after the next ovulation cycle. Why should
such elementary observations not be made generally known?
And why, indeed, should not all we already know about the
whole mysterious process be made generally known, instead of
being left to chance as it is at present. Nothing but proper
knowledge can help us to solve our problems.

It is possible that some people may take umbrage at what I
have written. I can only reply that towards the end of his days a
man does not write his memoirs for schoolchildren. He writes
them because he wants mature men and women to take what
advantage they can from the lessons of his life. That has been
my object, and therefore I feel there can hardly be too much
enlightenment and advice. “Who brings much will surely bring
someone something”, said Goethe.

And what about married life in general?

It is a commonplace that mankind, like all other forms of
animal life, has a right to exist, and, indeed, the possibility of
existing at all, only in pairs, though, of course, from this obvious
fact to the legal institution of matrimony is a very far cry.
“Love is eternal.” That is quite true, but unfortunately for our
peace of mind and general comfort it often changes its object.
That no doubt sounds very immoral, and, of course, it is. But to
call a thing immoral does not deprive it of its existence or prevent
men (and women) continuing to practise it. It is a dangerous
thing for a doctor to set himself up as a moralist. Mil humani
mihi alienum esse puto. But a doctor should stand four square on
a moral basis, and woe betide him if he ever leaves it or finds
it rocking under his feet. He is constantly asked for advice, and
534

A Doctor's Dialogues

when he gives it, it should be only such advice as can be brought
into conformity with ethical principles. Now that’s all very fine
and large, but life itself is not dogmatic. Biological conditions of
life, constitutional make-up, inborn tendencies, and just fate
pure and simple can all create circumstances which are difficult
to fit neatly and satisfactorily into any cut-and-dried scheme of
things. Very often they can be wrenched into place by neither
law nor violence. Heart and understanding are then the only
solution, with the possible addition of human tolerance. It is
not a doctor’s task to judge. It is his task to regulate and advise.
And that advice must be the best possible for the patient and his
family in the circumstances prevailing, whatever they may be.

The doctor has to do with the woman rather than the lady,
and with the plain, though not always^ simple, man rather than
the gentleman. When these two terms are found to be synony-
mous in any man or woman the conjunction is a happy one, but
in the many, many cases where they are not happily united in
one and the same person, then it is no part of the doctor’s busi-
ness to attempt to wrench them into line or refuse to help where
help is required. The German legal axiom that marriage is the
foundation of a joint community of interests is a sober and
common-sense one. It secures the existence of certain legal and
moral conditions, but on the other hand it takes little heed of
the individual. And here lies the germ of the conflict from
which many, perhaps even the majority of people suffer, and
which results in the great crises of life.

The whole love life of humanity remains mystical. To
attempt to set up generally applicable rules is a thankless task.
But there are certain generally observable categories which help
us a little in introducing some sort of order into the chaos.
{a) There is what may be called a love instinct, and those in
this category seek primarily the satisfaction of a natural urge.
Frank Harris as he presents himself in his autobiography ‘^My
Life and Loves” falls into this category when he declares
revealingly : 'T was 54 years old before I saw an ugly woman”.
Most people keep Frank Harris company in this category, I
think. The object of their temporary affection is not important.
Such people can conclude marriages of mutual interest,
arranged marriages, or marriages per procuram. Love is re-

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

placed by comfort and use. Quite tolerable marriages are
possible on such a basis.

And then there is {b) love, properly so called. The Hungarian
Petoefi once declared that love could make up for everything,
but nothing could make up for love. This sort of love is a cul-
tural psychosis. Amongst savage tribes, and in ancient days
before the dawn of human culture, there was no such thing as
lyric feeling or expression, although the epic was known and
flourished. The epic greatly precedes the lyric in point of time.
It was only with the progress of culture and civilization that the
poets turned their attention to psycho-erotic effusions. The
physico-erotic does not get married because he is unwilling to
spoil things with so many for the sake of one. The psycho-
erotic marries because he^is ready to sacrifice all for one. What
can we assume as the reason for this affinity or attraction?

Weininger’s mathematical solution of the problem according
to which an ideal pair must add up to lOO per cent, masculine
and 100 per cent, feminine is striHngly formulated, but as an
accurate mathematical equation it is scientifically impossible
because the sum contains so many unknown factors. The pairing
of human beings is an indefinable conjuncture of suitabilities
whereby the peculiarities of each meet those of the other only to
strengthen each other mutually. I am aware that this sentence
is not all too easy to grasp and therefore it no doubt sounds scien-
tific, but in truth it is a fine cloak for our ignorance. But, at least,
when two people fall in love with each other we may reasonably
assume that in some way or the other, or in some ways, they are
attuned. Is it the sense of smeU which produces the effect?
Krafft-Ebing assumed so because he believed that the sexual
brain centre was identical with the brain centre for the sense of
smell. Perhaps it is so; perhaps it isn’t. We still don’t know*
what it is.

We may reasonably assume that it is a psychosis of some sort
because it behaves like one, declining gradually into nothing.
The psychosis of love with all its paroxysms lasts on an average
three years. I am aware that many sentimental people will
raise a loud chorus of indignation at this point, but they won’t
deceive me, for I know that the shout will come more from a
feeling of conventional duty than from real inner conviction.
536

A Doctofs Dialogues

Such people usually lack sufficient moral courage to admit
their real convictions. They have used the word ’^'eternar^ so
often that some of them begin to believe it, or believe it ought to
be, although they no longer feel it. Quite the best thing to do is
to let lovers have their heads. They rarely do any damage and
sooner or later they come back to a more reasonable view of life
and themselves.

And finally there is category [c), and it is well to beware of its
members. ‘'Sexual bondage” is the mark of this group. Love
can be compared to a magnetic attraction, but sexual bondage
is a state of ossified junction which can be broken, if at all, only
with catastrophic results. The most instructive case in my
experience was the famous cause celebre^ the murder trial of
Major Goeben. Goeben murdered Colonel von Schosnebeck
because he was in a state of sexual bondage to von Schoenebeck’s
wife. Generally in my experience the most catastrophic
tragedies in the pathology of love have occurred between
people inextricably bound to each other in this way. Perhaps
the greatest tragedies of all are those between homosexuals, and
then it is usually worse as between Lesbians than between homo-
sexuals in the narrower, masculine sense.

Lasting marriages are based in the long run not on passionate
love but on comradeship, on joint family and material interests,
on mutual compatibility, on unconflicting sensual satisfactions,
and on comfort and convenience in general. It is quite im-
material whether such relationships are legal or illegal. It has
been jocularly said — and with more than a grain of truth — that
an illegal pair can live together quite as well as a legally married
pair, but not half so badly, because the unfortunate legally
married pair have to continue their unhappy life together even
after it has become a burden to them both — or at least the
obstacles in the way of separation are much greater.

When a love affair is illegal it tends to be firmer than when it
is legal largely because of the opposition the world feels it must
show to it. There is an element of defiance involved. The pair
in question often cling together out of sheer obstinacy. Another
very important factor is that each knows that he is free to break
the relation if he wants too. Human nature being what it is,
this makes it easier to be faithful. I must say quite frankly that

537

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

in my experience there is less unfaithfulness and deception in
illegal relationships than in legal ones. And^ again, if unfaith-
fulness does occur the guilty party, if he happens subsequently
to feel remorse, finds it much easier to resume the old relation-
ship than he would if it possessed the indignantly possessive
rights of the married state.

As for advice to married people in difficulties — and what
married people aren’t at some time or the other? — all I can say
is that when the originally strong mutual attraction of passion-
ate love begins to weaken — as it surely must — then they should
willingly loosen the bearing rein. The skittish partner may
break step now and again, but he is far more likely to return
repentant than if he had to wrench himself loose. In the long
run compulsion will hold no one. But ‘‘willing slaves” are very
loyal.

Reading through these observations after having written
them I was, like all other hypocrites will be, quite indignant
with myself at such immorality — but I couldn’t persuade my-
self that they weren’t words of wisdom, and so I let them stand.
I have often known men return to their wives mortified and
repentant, with the explanation that the other woman was no
different and certainly no better than the “old” one. One
might say that the legal institution of marriage is erected as a
dam to sexual experience. It continues to exist in defiance of
sexual experience. For social and moral reasons it is a necessary
and desirable institution and it should be held in high honour
in any civilized human society. Objectively speaking this is
absolutely correct. The trouble, the collision with real, subjec-
tive life, arises because sex feeling is not dominated by our will,
and that man, like almost all other animals, is by nature
polygamous. I am not talking here of sexually indifferent
people (of whom there are many), but of healthy people of
definitely active sexual feelings. Such people are under the
influence of instincts and tropisms. All human beings are sub-
jected to the same uniform laws of life. The discrepancy be-
tween individuals of various tendencies and the rigidity of the
law is the never sealed source of conflict which cries aloud for
self-help and self-regulation.

Virginity and faithfulness are two conceptions with their own
5SS

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

special importance from a racial, tribal and social standpoint,
hence the cult of the vestal virgin. It is a scientific fact that a
man does not merely cause a woman to conceive his child. He
does more; he impregnates her with his own essence, and this is
the reason why a child quite legitimately the offspring of a
second husband can physically (and otherwise) resemble the
first husband. In the animal world when once a full-blood has
been crossed by a half-breed the full-blood will never again
breed full-bloods even although the female full-blood did not
bear as the result of the crossing. Here lies the basis for the
privileges which go with primogeniture. However, it is an open
question whether it would be beneficial either for nature of for
peoples to confine matters to such exclusive crossings. As far as
the reproduction of family characteristics is concerned the
answer is most certainly yes. As far as racial hygiene is con-
cerned a different opinion is possible. In any case, individuals
cannot be strictly controlled by general regulations. As Heine
has said, with quite a grain of truth : Our gentlemen make our
servants, and our servants make our gentlemen.

Thejusprima metis certainly tended to improve the breed in
the days of chivalry. The impregnation of the peasant serf
bride by the more highly cultivated Baronial seed secured this
improvement. The influence of this right and its exercise has
not yet been sufficiently estimated amongst the causes which led
to a higher European civilization. If mankind should ever go in
for rational breeding it would have to reconsider this mediaeval
institution.

Although most marriages are proverbially made in heaven it
frequently happens that the doctor is consulted in the affair.
Within the same race it is highly desirable that pairs should
come together who are not remotely related to each other. The
strongest possible advice should be given against any inter-
marriage of related persons. Such marriages seldom take place
with impunity ; catastrophe of one kind or the other is the al-
most invariable rule. Perhaps Richard Wagner had this in mind
when he made Siegfried’s parents brother and sister, or Goethe
when he made Mignon of similar parentage. Byron produced a
daughter with his half sister Aurora Leigh : the subsequently un-
fortunate Medora. But Ibsen drew the darkest picture when he

539

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

wrote ‘^Ghosts’’ around Oswald Alving and his half-sister. In
all these cases the tragedy lay not in the prohibited action itself
but in its disastrous consequences for the offspring.

I see no objection to tlae legal prohibition of marriages be-
tween blood relations, and much in its favour. The law already
prohibits the marriage of brothers and sisters. Its provisions
should be extended to embrace cousins. It would, theoretically,
also be advisable to prohibit the marriage of persons constitu-
tionally burdened, but such a law would not be easy to adminis-
ter," and in practice therefore it is better not to over-span the
bow. A reasonable and humane middle path in such matters
should be sought.

Another important point is that people who get married
should stand in a suitable age relationship to each other. The
old common-sense peasant rule of thumb, according to which
the woman should be half the man’s age plus seven years, is not
a bad one. Thus a twenty-year-old youth should marry a girl of
seventeen, whilst a fifty-year-old man should marry a woman of
thirty-two, and so on. This rule is quite generally applicable
with advantage. The offspring of a thirty-year-old woman are
the best developed. This has been demonstrated true in long
experience and we can stand by it safely, though it is hardly
necessary to point out that the exceptions are many. Generally
speaking the third child of a marriage is the best developed both
physically and mentally, and I think this is due to the fact that
maturer women bear riper fruit. The parents have grown
older; they have become mature without yet ageing; they are
at the peak of their powers.

On sound principle, of course, only thoroughly healthy
people should found families. It is a great burden to the
country if its youth is weakly. However, once again, it is not al-
ways possible to secure the upholding of this principle, and, in
any case, there are also exceptions to it, for instance we know
that Beethoven was the son of a heavy drinker, whilst Johann
Sebastian Bach had half-wits amongst his ancestors. On the
other hand, Chopin, whose father was a powerful blacksmith,
was a puny weakling who died at the early age of thirty-nine.

Marital advisory clinics are very valuable institutions and
they should be established on a wide scale. This is something
540

A Doctofs Dialogues

the Government can see to beneficially, but it is inadvisable
that it should go much farther. Hitler introduced compulsory
sterilization centres to prevent the production of children by
hygienically unsuited people. We don’t want to copy his
methods, but at the same time everything possible should be
done to persuade, let us say persons burdened with hereditary
insanity, cretinism, etc., from producing children.

I had just written these lines in November 1943 when over
the wireless I heard of the death of Max Reinhardt. I consider
Reinhardt to have been a theatrical genius. But what were his
physical antecedents? His father was normal, but his mother
was weak-minded. She produced nine children, two of them
were eminently talented (one, as I have said, was a genius), two
or three others were normal, whilst the rest were uneducable. If
man-made laws had prevented that marriage, one genius would
have been lost to the world. Children are produced by two
people, but no one can say according to what laws children
inherit, or what part each parent has in the final result. One
parent will often be obviously predominant in the child, and,
in any case, it is as well to remember that nature has great
powers. of adaptation and compensation.

There are sterile marriages in which each partner has already
proved in former marriages his and her capacity to reproduce.
However, the most usual thing is that sterility in a marriage can
be put down to one of the two partners. We have already dis-
cussed the question of female sterility. Where the man is sterile
it may be due to impoientia ccsundi or impotentia generandi^ or
both. In the former case the question of artificial insemination
can be discussed. The male seed can be artificially introduced
into the uterus. Russian peasants have used this method in
their cattle-breeding since the days of Olim. Doederlen and
Kroenig experimented with it successfully in Germany forty
years ago. Their success was forgotten and it is only in recent
years that the matter has again come to the fore. From the
medical point of view there are no sound objections, but from
the standpoint of jurisprudence there can be many misgivings.
However, since experience has proved that children conceived
in this fashion cannot be distinguished in any way subsequently
from children conceived in the normal fashion doctors can

541

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

leave all the other objections with a good conscience to those
they concern.

How do you stand to the problem of homosexuality ?

I can see no reason to judge homosexuality any differently in
our day than in any other. When any living thing is over-
cultivated it ceases to develop further and dies or withers. The
best seed loses its generative powers when it is produced again
and again indefinitely. Homosexuality in human beings is a
sign of exhaustion in the generative forces of the human seed. I
have already pointed out that geniuses have rarely if ever pro-
duced geniuses. Geniuses are the culminating point of a genera-
tion, and that is the end of it. Very often the offspring of
geniuses are almost valueless members of society, and some-
times they are positively noxious, and it would have been better
had they never been bom, I have many examples in my mind
to justify this tragic truth. Whole peoples are subject to the
same law. Once they have climbed to certain cultural heights
they have to leave the field to other and younger peoples with
unexhausted forces.

Homosexuality is a protective device of nature against the
production of inferior offspring. That laws should punish and
persecute unfortunate individuals who have come under this
inexorable law of nature is a social crime. Any action, whether
formally a crime or not, should not bring punishment to the
perpetrator if he is not in the full enjoyment of his free will when
it is committed. How legislators and judges have come to
punish homosexuality is dijBficult to understand for people of
non-legal mentality. The perversion of heterosexual disinclina-
tion to homosexual inclination is only a step. Such inclinations
bring the unfortunate, who cannot help the fact that he is made
that way, outside the social pale, and in addition he tends to
isolate himself from the normal majority. To go still further and
threaten these unfortunate and quite innocent people with all
the rigours of criminal law if they live their own natural life
(it is precisely natural for them) is a crying injustice.

If any punishment is desirable, which it most certainly is not,
then the very fact of being homosexual is punishment enough,
for it excludes the unfortunate victim from the pleasures of the
542

A Doctor's Dialogues

mass of his normal fellow citizens. He is made to feel himself a
moral outcast from normal society. Another important point is
that perverse inclinations are more difficult to overcome than
normal sexual inclinations. Homosexuals, even those of high
character, will more easily commit offences owing to their
constitutional tendency than they would be likely to commit
analagous offences if they were normal. Their particular form
of affection psychosis, commonly called love, is more elementary
than the normal one.

It is about time the normal individual asked himself why such
laws as those against homosexuality, which violate both reason
and good feeling, are allowed to continue in force. The limits of
the penal code and the limits of personal freedom are clearly
indicated in the axiom : suum cuique et nemini nocere. If this simple
axiom, which no amount of legal twisting can rob of its pro-
found humanity, is upheld, then each citizen will have the right
to live according to his own lights in so far as he creates no
public nuisance and harms no one. The same postulate is in
operation for normal people in their physical and professional
lives, and amongst moral people it is respected.

Homosexuals are not granted the benefit of this salutary
principle. A difference is made between male and female homo-
sexuals. Where male homosexuals are concerned the law
regards the neminem nocere clause as violated, whereas by female
homosexuals, so-called Lesbians, it does not. In my life I have
seen vastly more damage done by so-called normal sexuality
than by homosexuality. I don’t quite know what our legis-
lators had in mind when they made homosexual activity in
males a punishable offence, but in my experience in the great
majority of cases in which homosexual mutual satisfaction takes
place no damage is done to anyone. Further, coitus per anum
takes place much more frequently amongst heterosexuals in
certain social classes, and amongst certain peoples, than it does
amongst homosexuals without its being regarded as a physical
injury. In general, no provision is made against such sexual
“physical injuries”, otherwise the law might have to permit
marriage between a Serbo-Croat and a Polish woman, but
forbid it with an Englishwoman.

There remains the objection of the State and the objection on

543

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

moral grounds. I think we can leave the latter most properly to
the Church. The objection of the State that homosexuality
undermines its great aim of securing sufficient cannon-fodder is
quite a mistaken one from the national hygienic standpoint, and,
in any case, offspring resulting from any kind of compulsion are
more often harmful than beneficial to any State. Thus such in-
human and nonsensical legislation achieves no beneficial
results whatever. On the contrary, it does considerable damage.
The greatest damage it does is to intimidate many respectable
and often highly valuable people at the zenith of their creative
capacities ; their intellectual productivity is hampered, they are
often victimized by that worst of all criminals, the blackmailer,
and they are socially stigmatized.

One is almost ashamed to put such obvious truths down on
paper; they are so crystal clear — and yet the shameful laws
remain in force. Public humanity all along the line is the
declared programme of all parties, but as soon as certain facts
come under discussion the humanity ceases. The whole situa-
tion reminds me rather of the reaction of a well-known philo-
semite. At a meeting someone openly expressed the suspicion
that his philosemitic proclivities came from the fact that he had
Jewish blood in his veins. His indignation knew no bounds, and
he sprang to his feet excitedly demanding an apology for the
insult offered him. The humane legislator who is hostile to the
homosexuals obviously wishes to forestall any suggestion that he
might be ‘^one of the others”. I am quite prepared to risk any
such accusation in my case. I can do it with a clear conscience.

Up to now we have been discussing hereditary homosexuality,
but what about the acquired variety? Here a closer examina-
tion of the particular circumstances is required. In our social
and legal environment to-day sexuality of any kind has its pit-
falls and its traps for the unwary. There are dangers which
everyone must avoid for himself. The struggle for existence
(half of which is procreation) demands the expenditure of a
great deal of energy. Whoever is not fully up to this task can
easily suffer damage in a society such as ours. Sexual maturity
sometimes appears at a very early age. There is the individual
crisis of puberty. There is the mystic and powerful urge to
satisfy a desire which is purely instinctive. All these things
544

A Doctors Dialogues

represent rocks on which the individual bark can shatter. En-
lightenment is the only thing which can help. The stronger the
urge, the more powerful must be the inhibitions which dam it*
The truly moral man is the victor in this conflict. Morality is an
expensive attainment; it is the privilege of homo sapiens as
against the animal rapiens. There are many factors in our
modem civilized life which work counter to the normal and
instinctive urge : education, morality, religion, lack of oppor-
tunity, lack of a suitable object, and, finally, such inhibitions as
fear of infection, fear of pregnancy, and all the other social and
economic consequences.

The individual must run the gauntlet of all these things. The
strong and vigorous will gird his loins to make the passage
safely, but the weakling will often seek a way of escape in
masturbation — or perhaps in homosexual mutuality. In these
two ways the battle can be avoided. Other factors enter into
consideration : the separate education of the sexes, male
comradeship in games and sports, army life and so on. AJl these
things militate against any normal relations between the sexes,
and sometimes prevent them altogether. But the natural urge
of every individual to attach himself to another individual re-
mains, and homosexual satisfaction often develops from male
friendships, even when originally no strong inclination in that
direction was present.

These are some of the potential causes of voluntarily accepted
homosexuality. But even apart from any such semi-compelling
circumstances, homosexuality can be developed by an exagger-
ated protection of the female sex. Any attempt at approaching a
woman can lead to extremely unpleasant consequences for the
man if the woman so wishes. There are sufficient examples of
how quite innocent situations have been construed into crimes.
In the case of a nervous, over-anxious man the simplest thing
often appears to be to avoid women altogether. If the State
wishes to protect and encourage healthy sexuality, then it should
grant no special protection to the female sex. The individual, of
whatever sex, has sufficient protection in any properly ordered
society. Everyone must look after himself with the provisions
which protect us all. The idea of ‘‘the weaker sex’’ is an anachro-
nistic survival from the middle ages. To-day women have equal

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

rights with men in the professions and so on. They are quite
capable (and how!) of looking after themselves in sexual mat-
ters. If women court danger they must be prepared to face the
consequences. The upholders of the same moral code for both
sexes have won their point, and rightly. Now let them abandon
all special protection for women as no longer necessary.

Special protection for women as such is more than un-
necessary, it is an insult to women and their proper indepen-
dence. The bride is still regarded as a sort of comic victim, and
the legislation which still protects, or supposedly protects, ‘^the
poor female” is just as comic. Enlightenment is what is needed,
not old-fashioned mollycoddling. Widespread sexual enlighten-
ment will raise public morality to a much higher level than any
amount of police protection ever will. Sexual hygiene and the
significance of sexual functions should be taught in every school
as a normal part of its curriculum. The present taboo for both
pupils and teachers should be removed. In this respect it is not a
question of what, but of how. Let it be done and we shall see
that naturalia non turpia sunL

A very different thing is, of course, the protection of minors,
but even here there should be no distinction between the sexes.
The children of both sexes must be protected, and whoever com-
mits an offence against either girl or boy should be subject to
condign punishment. I am firmly convinced that no intelligent,
self-respecting woman wishes for any form of grandmotherly
legislative coddling. The brutally possessive morality of the
crusading ages (not that it was so very successful) is out of date in
the twentieth century. In our day there are a great and sufficient
variety of obstacles to frivolous and irresponsible sexual inter-
course. In the interests of public sex hygiene no State should
pile up still more hindrances calculated to isolate the sexes still
further.

Hereditary homosexuality and acquired homosexuality are
two fundamentally different things, and they must be treated as
such in every respect. Hereditary homosexuality bears physical
stigmata. The secondary sexual characteristics of men who are
hereditary homosexuals are usually feminine. Their pubic
hairs very often do not grow in a rhomboid shape up to the
navel. The hair growth under the armpits and on the chin and
546

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

cheeks is often sparse. The voice is often eunuchoid and high
pitched ; the hair on the head particularly luxuriant ; the breasts
(as distinct from the chest) are more strongly developed and the
nipples slightly erectile. I could mention many other similar
stigmata, but the most important thing of all, and the one I
wish to stress most strongly, is that such men are abnormal not
only in the physical, constitutional sense I have described, but
also functionally. The expert can recognize them from their
attitude and their movements and by their hypersensitive
reactions.

This difference is most obvious in the movement of the arms.
They use primarily their forearms as though their shoulder
muscles wete paralysed, and the upper arm is normally kept
pressed against the body. Their wrists are usually over-mobile
and they gesticulate with their fingers. One might say that
their arm, hand and finger movements have a centripetal ten-
dency, whereas the movements of a normal man are centrifugal.
The general movement of homosexuals can be described as
closed, whilst that of normal men is open. When homosexuals
dance, lecture or act on the stage they generally keep their
upper arms pressed to the body. And when they move from
place to place they do not stride vigorously and freely like
normal men; they trip along, and often there is a decided
feminine roll of the hips.

When a normal man dances he embraces his partner willingly
with his right arm, which he lifts far above elbow height. In
moments of pathos the" normal man is inclined to open his arms.
Of course, here, too, there are all sorts of stages from the ex-
treme manly to the pronounced feminine, but with some con-
fidence, if with some caution, we can say that the sexual power
can be measured by the angle at which the upper arm stands
away from the body in use. Recall the pictures of that virile
bull Mussolini addressing his followers ; his arms are outspread
vigorously as thou^ he would like to grasp the whole world.
And compare him with that asexual rice-pudding vegetarian
Adolf Hitler, who wouldn’t raise his arm properly even to
execute the gesture of greeting named after him, but who just
feebly raised his underarm in reply.

Everything we know goes to show that homosexuality where

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

it is hereditary is due to constitutional forces and coercive urges,
which although they can be suppressed by violence should not
be punishable, because they are more elementary than the
inhibitions which operate against them. To despise and outlaw
such people instead of feeling sympathy for them is in accor-
dance neither with objective justice nor with the present stage
of our psycho-biological knowledge.

Another phenomenon on this field should not be ignored.
Experience shows that when normal sexual excitation declines
with advancing years homosexual tendencies often begin to
make themselves felt. Let judges therefore take to heart the
classical axiom : Nemo beatus ante mortem.

Many sex investigators, and in particular Steinach and his
school, have contended that by means of operations or dosages
with hormones homosexual tendencies can be changed into
normal heterosexual ones. I have no grounds for denying this,
but from my own experience I cannot confirm it. There is no
doubt that bi-sexual individuals exist. Such people are capable
of reproducing the species. But first of all these are exceptional
cases, and secondly their normal sexual activity (often per-
formed against the grain) is often used as an alibi to ward off
charges which relate to their other and abnormal sexual
activity. This is the reason why so many homosexuals avail
themselves of the protective screen of marriage.

To change the subject rather abruptly^ what do you think about
stimulating drinks^ including coffee^ and about smoking?

The horrors that some people describe as in store for us if we
go on enjoying ourselves in various more or less harmless ways
are almost enough to embitter our enjoyment of the sweets of
life — ^but not quite, fortunately. It is as well to bear in mind
that any prohibition of this nature limits the pleasures of life,
and for a healthy man or woman one of the purposes of life is to
enjoy it. Unfortunately life is short and it is very often hard, and
therefore a doctor should be sparing in his prohibition of this or
that more or less harmless pleasure, and he should issue his fiat
against it only when he is truly confident that the sacrifice will
really bring sufficient compensation to the victim in the shape of
better health. So much for a general and liberal attitude. How-
54S

A Doctors Dialogues

ever, the doctor must, of course, always remember that most
people, and in particular most patients, are insatiable and un-
disciplined ; they are not in a position to impose inhibitions on
themselves however desirable they may be.

By a reductio ad absurdum even the most harmless food-
stuffs, drugs and medicaments will become harmful and even
poisonous if they are taken excessively. Poison is, in fact, more a
quantitative than a qualitative factor. In other words, almost
any substance can be useful in proper doses and harmful in
overdoses. For this reason and where possible I favour the
golden mean rather than prohibitions. A point in which
general medical opinion goes wrong is that it often makes a part
of the medicament, or whatever it may be, responsible for the
effect of the whole. Fortunately pharmacological science is far
enough advanced to-day not to identify the complex effect of
the medicament with the individual components which can
easily be extracted from the drug. Pharmacology is beginning
to return from morphium to the mother substance opium, from
atropin to belladonna, from digitoxin to digitalis, and so on.
The better effect obtained with the natural, unprepared plant
as compared with the prepared substance is due to the synergic
effect of the many properties contained in the natural plant. In
pure form the extract often produces diametrically the opposite
effect to that produced by the natural substance.

When we speak of the effect of alcohol we mean all drinks
which contain alcohol, but when we speak of coffee we mean the
caffeine found in it, and when we speak of smoking we are refer-
ring to nicotine. This pars pro toto conception has come about
as the result of pharmaco-chemical analysis procedure which
has isolated certain prominent constituents of whatever sub-
stance may be in question and demonstrated its poisonous
properties by experiment. The lessons of such experiments
have been applied to the drug, or whatever it is, as a whole, and
thus the effect of a complex substance has been identified wth
that of a few, isolated components of that substance. The
natural step after this was to extract these components from the
mother substance and then sell the raw material deprived of its
poisonous components to the public as harmless and even bene-
ficial. This scientific procedure of "‘castration”, as one might

549

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

call it, presented a relieved world with tobacco without nicotine,
coffee without caffeine and non-alcoholic wines.

Let us deal first of all with the demon alcohol. In the whole
gamut of pharmacology I have been unable to discover a single
convincing experiment with pure alcohol which demonstrated
convincingly the devastating effects normally ascribed to drink.
General experience, which any enthusiastic experimenter can
make his own if he wants to, indicates that various alcoholic
drinks have various effects. The stimulating effects of drinking
say Rhine wine or Burgundy, the effect on the soul, if I can put
it that way, of drinking Sautemes, or cognac, or some similar
liqueur, the effect of drinking champagne, or beer, are all differ-
ent and incomparable. Similarly, the symptoms of acute
intoxication which all these drinks can produce if taken to
excess and also the accompanying and after effects are also all
different. If it were the alcohol and the alcohol alone which
was responsible for the effect of alcoholic drinks, then clearly in
the last resort the effect would have to be the same no matter
what kind of alcoholic drink were involved, but it most certainly
is not, and therefore we are entitled to assume that there must be
something else in all these particular drinks to produce their
specific effects. It is primarily the etheric oils and other extract
substances which give an alcoholic drink its particular character
and taste. They lose their poisonous properties with age and
they affect the alcoholic properties.

When we see the damage done by excessive drinking to the
brain, nerves, kidneys and liver amongst patients from poverty-
stricken circumstances then we are compelled to assume that
the damage was done by the fusel contained in large quantities
in the cheap alcoholic' drinks they consumed. Any doctor in
private practice who has well-to-do patients who drink a lot
knows of men (and women) who drink far more than these
other poor devils without doing themselves much harm. Why?
Because they are in a position to drink good and expensive
wines, etc., which have had time to mature.

The same consideration can be applied, mutatis mutandis^ to
other stimulants, for instance smoking. Here again, the poison
chemically isolated from the mother substance, the tobacco
plant, and given the name of nicotine, has been made the para-
550

A Doctor’s Dialogues

digma for smoking altogether. It would be foolish to attempt to
deny the highly poisonous properties of nicotine and therefore
the possibility of nicotine poisoning, but it would be advisable to
formulate the question rather differently. Does the pleasure
experienced in smoking depend on the presence of this poison
nicotine alone, or is the pleasure due to the sum of the whole
constituents of the tobacco plant and the substances produced in
the burning? Here too the effect will depend on the etheric oils
present in the tobacco leaf. At this point it is also interesting to
bear in mind that cheap cigars contain the greater quantity of
nicotine and are much more deleterious to health than the
noble leaf from which imported havanas are made. Such
tobacco shows a very low nicotine content. In addition,
Havanas do not lend themselves to chain smoking so readily as
their very much poorer relations.

As in the case of alcoholic drinks so with tobacco: we are
forced to the conclusion that it is not the nicotine alone which
produces the total effect of smoking, but a conjimction of the
nicotine with the other not-yet analysed and still-unknown sub-
stances. The horrible examples we find sprinkled liberally
throughout medical literature on the subject refer to the devas-
tating effect of pure nicotine and not to smoking as such at all.
This hateful, I might almost say puritanical, way of looking at
the matter has led to thunderous condemnations of smoking.
The verdict has been so apodictic that the possibility that smok-
ing as such might even be beneficial to the human organism has
never even been discussed. Once again, therefore, the effects of
nicotine poisoning should be distinguished strictly from the
effects of smoking as such. Although very little is yet known
chemically about the various ingredients of tobacco it can al-
ready be taken as quite definite 5iat it is not merely the origin
which influences the effect and the taste of the tobacco, but that
quality and taste depend also on climatic influences during the
drying period, and on the various methods of treatment to
which the leaf is subjected before it is made up. It is rather
these incidental factors which determine the various aromas and
the quality of the tobacco.

On the basis of these facts much might be achieved for in-
stance if a doctor persuaded a patient to change his brand. In

551

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

this way a counter-effect might be secured against the accumu-
lation of poisons in any particular tobacco kind. Those people
who boast (why I don’t know) that they have always smoked
the same brand of cigars for so and so many years without a
change are in much greater danger of contracting poisoning
than those less faithful souls who change the brand constantly.

It is deplorable to have to admit that although we know a
very great deal indeed about the devastating effects of nicotine
poisoning on the vegetative nervous system, on the circulatory
system by veinous cramp, and so on, we know practically noth-
ing scientifically about the cheering, stimulating and comforting
effect of smoking on a man’s whole attitude and outlook. The
favourable effect of smoking on the secretions of the stomach,
the intestinal canal and the digestive glands has been very little
studied. We are inclined to disregard these favourable effects
of smoking and to condemn snioking as, at best, a superfluous
and, at worst, a noxious habit of foolish men — and women too
nowadays. As a result of this superficial attitude the first thing
most doctors do in cases of functional disorder is to prohibit
smoking right away. The fact that it sometimes happens that
when smoking is given up the patient’s condition changes, just
as an alteration of his mode of life will change it, and changes
for the better is used as an argument against smoking altogether.
If we are prejudiced against smoking and regard the improve-
ment obtained as a consequence of giving up smoking, instead
of as the consequence of giving up a habit, then, of course, we
can turn the matter into a proof for the deleteriousness of smok-
ing. But if we take into consideration the fact that any sort of
change in a man’s mode of life can produce the same effect we
can see that the abandonment of, say, the use of lump sugar,
can do it without having resort to the burdensome and nerve-
straining fight to give up smoking.

There are, of course, over-sensitive people who cannot stand
smoking and who react excessively to the use of tobacco. In
such cases there is only one thing to do and that is to abandon
smoking. But where smoking has become a necessity and
remained a pleasure it is, to say the least of it, an exaggeration to
tear a man away from his pleasant weed. I will go so far as to
say that I have never seen any damage done by moderate smok-
552

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

ing and that even the so-called smoker’s cough is the result of
inadequate nasal breathing which whilst it is aggravated by
smoking is not caused by it. I have hardly ever seen any direct
damage to the circulatory system from smoking, whereas I have
often been in a position to observe its beneficial and stimulating
effect. All discussions on the relation between smoking and
blood pressure or arterio-sclerosis are based on the quite false
analogy that because in experiments pure nicotine was seen to
congest the veins, smoking must therefore have, or tend to have,
the same effect.

After this rather unconventional dissertation on smoking let
me stress again that I am the last to deny that poisoning can
result from an excessive consumption of tobacco, but I am quite
convinced that nicotine is not the only effective element in
smoking, and that smoking can be beneficial to health, and
that, in any case, it is by no means so deleterious to health as is
generally assumed. Further, I do not believe that smoking has
anything whatever to do with arterio-sclerosis, that it can lead
to angina pectoris or that it worsens the condition of a heart
patient in any specific way. The prohibition of smoking should
therefore not be an inevitable sentence when the doctor runs the
rule over his patient and begins to shake his head at what he
finds. In the whole anti-nicotine literature — and there is a lot of
it — I could not find a single objective experiment which would
stand up to strict, unprejudiced and scientific criticism. We
find arterio-sclerosis in the same incidence with smokers and
non-smokers, just as we find it with animals, and particularly
with the king of beasts, the lion.

And finally we come to coffee. All the effects of coffee are
ascribed to the caffeine it contains. First of all, the bean in its
natural state contains no caffeine, which appears only as a by-
product of the process of roasting. Apart from alkaloids ordi-
nary coffee also contains waxy substances and aromatic proper-
ties which exercise a stimulating effect upon the central nervous
system. The individual will react to these substances according
to his own condition. People who find they cannot sleep at
night after having drunk coffee, can often drink strong black
coffee after their lunch and go off into a refreshing siesta. In
addition, in cases of circulatory weakness, and in particular

553

Janos, The Story of a Doctor

after exhausting attacks of angina pectoris the drinking of coffee
has a beneficial rather than a deleterious effect and in such
cases it encourages sleep.

One thing I must reject as quite out of place in any discussion
of tills civilizatory achievement of mankind, and that is a com-
parison with the animal world, whose inhabitants never touch
any stimulating food or drink all their lives. Alcoholic drinks,
coffee and smoking are necessary compensations for the highly
organized civilized life we lead. Such a life makes a much
greater demand on nervous energy than any primitive being
would be able to stand. To talk about “Back to Nature!’"
whilst retaining a life of telegrams, telephones, wireless, motor-
cars, aeroplanes and other exciting and nerve-exhausting factors
is as stupid as it is useless.

The pleasures we have been discussing here compensate for
the excessive demands which are made on our physical and
psychological powers and therefore on the whole they are bene-
ficial rather than otherwise. The damage that such pleasures
can do if indulged in to excess is no greater than the damage
that can be done to the body by, say, the excessive drinking of
water, or by the excessive consumption of “good, wholesome
foods”. These little pleasures must be taken in moderation,
just as food must. Only incorrigible obstinacy and prejudice
will insist on seeing death at the end of life as a result of its few
pleasures, instead of realizing that it is life itself which is the
poison which inevitably leads to death at last, and that for all of
us, drinkers and non-drinkers, smokers and non-smokers alike.

And now for the last and saddest question of all: what about old age,
and death?

Our lives are subject to the eternal cycle of development and
decline. The whole of life is a process of birth and death. How-
ever, let us not take up our space by philosophizing, but let us deal
rather with the individual as the subject of this cycle. Each
individual without any exception whatsoever is subject to the
process of ageing which begins the moment he is conceived and
goes on in an irrevocable process until death comes. In this
general process of ageing the individual units of the human
organism are subject to differing cycles. As long as the indi-
554

A Doctor's Dialogues

vidual cells retain the ability to regenerate themselves, that is to
say to discard and rebuild, the process of life as a whole will be
maintained. However, with every cycle of discarding and re-
building once the body has reached maturity the ability of the
successive cell to regenerate declines gradatim, and we can then
say that the process of ageing really begins. Each type of cell
has its own cyclical period and this is unchangeable. Here too
there is an order of vitality. Generally speaking one can say
that cells with a shorter span of life regenerate more quickly,
whilst other cells with a longer span of life regenerate more
slowly. For instance germ and blood cells have a very rapid
regenerative faculty, and they are much more sensitive to radio-
active phenomena than muscle or nerve cells.

This highly important question of the varying cyclical periods
has been rather neglected by scientific research as yet, but the
medical practitioner knows from experience that certain organs
take longer to heal than others once they have been damaged.
One thing is quite certain: within a definite period, which
varies as between cell and cell as I have said, all cells are re-
newed and the mother cells are absorbed into the body and
eliminated. Thus in every living organism there is a constant
and harmonious process of birth and death, a process which
gradually exhausts itself and ceases. Thus in every living organ-
ism there must be two distinct phases. In the first, that is during
growth to maturity, the energy generated exceeds the process of
decline, which naturally goes on even in this phase. Once the
peak of maturity is reached the process is reversed : the process
of decline is greater than the process of regeneration and the
body gets old. If this process is regulated by the hormones then
it is clear that either the effectiveness of the hormones declines
in time or that the cells gradually lose their reactive capacity.
The truth is probably that both these things happen together,
otherwise it would be difficult to understand Ixow when the
hormone effectiveness is increased by dosages of pure glandular
extract the power of regeneration is increased.

Just as rejuvenation does not exhaust itself in causing the
sexual function to flicker into activity again, so the process of
ageing is not confined to the decline of sexual potency. Both re-
juvenation and ageing are general processes in which various

555

Janos ^ The Story of a Doctor

organs always react, but in varying ways. This can be seen
most clearly in the eye, which with advancing age and the in-
variable change in the refractory media gradually and measur-
ably becomes far-sighted. With advancing age, too, and most
noticeably, the flexibility and the elasticity of the muscles, the
joints and other moving parts decline. The movements of age-
ing people become slower and less vigorous, the process of co-
ordination takes more time.

If any practical definition of this process of ageing is required
then one might say that ageing is a decline in the reactive
ability of the organism. Efforts have been made to measure
these reaction times and to put the results to practical use, for
instance in testing pilots and motorists to discover how quickly
they react to warning signs. Here too it has been found that
generally speaking the older a man is the slower are his re-
actions, so that an old man is, on the whole, less likely to be able
to avoid an accident by presence of mind and rapid physical
reaction. We are faced with the problem of self-defence here.
Ancient mythology gave children a special god to look after
them, and the Christian Church gives them a Guardian Angel
who watches over them. Their rapid and instinctive reaction to
danger is put down to divine providence. If a child falls out of a
window it immediately and instinctively adopts the embyronic
position, and that is the position in which least damage can be
done to it.

The receptivity of the brain, which is so rapid and so great in
youth, gradually lessens, and soon it lives primarily on the
reserves it has accumulated in youth. I believe that the great
natural philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald was right when he de-
clared that there was no essential addition to life after the
twenty-fifth year. There are others who deny this and point to
the fact that most great achievements fall into later life. That
often appears to be so, but when they are examined more
closely they turn out to be nothing but elaborations of youthful
conceptions. Such youthful conceptions naturally become
more mature with advancing years, the routine of life and
thought is more efficient and the whole is more rounded, but
the fact remains that the final urge came from an earlier germ.
I do not believe that a man goes on learning until the day of his
55 ^

A Doctor's Dialogues

death. The u^ortunates who go on learning never do anything
outst^ding; in art they remain duffers, and in science they
remain their own assistants.

The closer man approaches to his end the more physical and
other feelings and inclinations change. This change does not
come about with dramatic rapidity, but gradually, and each
day that passes seems just like the one which preceded it, but it
is not. It is only with the years that the changes are gradually
forced to one’s notice and one realizes that one has adapted one-
self to one’s age. Tenderness and affection are turned towards
one’s children, and later on, and still more so, to one’s grand-
children. Different values are placed on the various phenomena
of life, and ambitions are reduced. The need for peace and
quiet becomes greater. A man becomes cautious and inclined
to consider carefully first before acting. A man is inclined to
conserve what he has rather than to increase it. Thought tends
to become egocentric and the personal circle becomes more and
more limited. Characteristics become more clearly marked.
Aualiary characteristics disappear. The essentials intensify
and with age we see the personality become more and more
definite.

The increasing subjectivity of age brings with it a certain lack
of human' understanding. The modem world old people see
around them is a very unsatisfactory one. Old times were best,
and present times are worse and sadder. An ageing man be-
comes a laudator temporis acti. He no longer understands
young people and he has no sympathy with their, to him, irre-
sponsible love of life, their yearnings and their need for love.
Thirty -years ago the women were beautiful; to-day they are
unattractive. And so on.

T his is an inexorable and natural process, and because it is
perfectly natural there is nothing essentially tragic about it.
Only if the process of involution does not proceed harmoniously,
if there is a disproportion in the ageing, if one or the other
function slows down or ceases prematurely, and in particular
when the mental processes decline, does the picture of normal
ageing turn into the pitiful picture of seniHty. Senility is a
tragedy becaxise the personality dies before the physical body.
The vegetative functions are still proceeding, but the spiritual

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

superstructure has decayed and spiritual control has ceased.
The hulk is still there, but the bridge is deserted.

Nature is merciful to age and the victim seldom notices the
greatness of the change which time has gradually brought
about, including even the decline of mental capacity. Gradu-
ally tlxere is an increasing willingness to help on the part of
others. An increased human tolerance surrounds the ageing
man. He is no longer contradicted. Things are no longer so
awkward and obstinate for him. His long stories are listened to
patiently. Utterance becomes wise and authoritative. Every-
thing becomes distorted and dishonest, and for the first time he
receives more than he claims. The life of an ageing man is based
on consideration, and he notices his weakness by the spon-
taneous willingness of others to assist him. Discussions which
are conducted in his presence are uncomplicated and soothing
in order not to upset him. His old bad habits are no longer
opposed, but perhaps even encouraged. When he walks he is
offered an arm to lean on. The hallway and the stairs are
lighted up specially for him. The scarf is carefully adjusted
round his neck, and his food is prepared with more than usual
care. Visits become shorter but more frequent, and although
the last flicker of vigorous human dignity revolts against this
treatment age finally submits to it gladly, because first of all it
really is comfortable and secondly it is motivated by kindness
and one is helpless against kindness. A man can defend himself
against hostility, but what can he do against kindness? Hos-
tility can make one’s life very difficult temporarily, but kindness
can spoil a man’s life irretrievably. The first period in which
the victim has not yet noticed that he has grown old whilst all
around him have seen it clearly is a tragi-comic one until he
realizes that he has become in need of help and consideration.
That is the stage in which an old man feels young again only in
the company of friends of the same age as himself. They can
still treat each other as they did in their younger days : without
particular respect, frankly, jocularly and with a refreshing
lack of special consideration. This is a pleasure only for the
old people. If young people are present they are moved to
sadness.

In any discussion of the subject of death the problem of
558

A Doctors Dialogues

euthanasia naturally arises, but rather than enter into contro-
versy on this much disputed issue I prefer to describe an
experience which speaks for itself. It concerns the death of a
woman during one of the most highly political periods of the
German Republic in 1923. The woman was the wife of the
German Reich’s Chancellor Luther. I spent many hours as a
doctor at her bed-side. The case proved hopeless. When the
sick-bed had become her death-bed her unfortunate husband
sat with me as long and as often as his onerous State duties
would permit. Frau Luther was suffering from an inoperable
tumour, and its extensions had affected the throat and the intes-
tinal tract. The jaw was locked and only artificial feeding was
possible, and at the same time a series of operations had to be
performed, not to save the patient’s life or restore her to health,
but merely in order to make her functions still possible. It was
one of those tragic cases in which the doctor knows perfectly
well that there is only one merciful and proper thing to do : to
hasten the end and make it as swift and painless as possible.
However, he also knows that he must not do it. The law cate-
gorically forbids such an act of simple humanity. The suffering
patient may not be released from his sufferings even if he pleads
with the doctor for death.

Even medicaments to ease the pain of death (euthanasia) may
be given only in doses fair below that necessary to bring about
death. With the agreement of the patient and his nearest a
human and self-sacrificing doctor will go to the ve^ limits of the
permissible when faced with such misery and a completely hope-
less existence. He will anxiously prescribe only the maximum
dosages permitted by the official pharmacopoeia, or only very,
very little in excess. Even in extreme cases he will seldom be
prepared to risk a conflict with the prevailing law. Almost any
doctor who has been in this position will agree with me that a
change in the law is necessary and desirable. A hopelessly sick
and slowly dying patient should be given the legal right to
demand the administration of an easy death.

Towards the end of his days a very sick person develops an
entirely different psyche. Very often nobility of character and
personality is revealed only on the death-bed, and it is here
that the most moving and elevating moment of a whole life-

559

Jdnos^ The Story of a Doctor

time can be experienced. Of course there are sometimes sudden
and unconvincing death-bed repentances and conversions
caused by a mixture of fear and speculation, but generally
speaking it is true to say noble men die nobly, and petty men die
pitifully. There comes a point when every sick man resigns him-
self to death, and the process of dying can be said to begin at
that point. It is then that the personality becomes enhanced :
the hard becomes still harder, the hateful still more hateful, the
sentimental still more sentimental. Incidentally dying people
usually regret sins of omission rather than those of commission.

What the law denies to the dying man is often given by nature
in a praemortal euphoria. This is a strange and mystical state of
happiness, a pleasurable rise in spirits, an influx of confidence.
The dying man is imbued with a feeling of happiness and con-
tent which is seldom the good fortune of a man in full possession
of all his senses and in good health, and in this feeling of happi-
ness he gladly surrenders his life without a struggle. Un-
fortunately euphoria does not always set in, but thanks to nature
we are in possession of means to bring about this euphoria, to
make the dying man free of his sufferings and glad to lay down
the burden of life. Why should these means be withheld from
any man who needs them? There are religious and legal objec-
tions. The reckoning is false. Because one person might excep-
tionally suffer an injustice through this new attitude to life, or
rather, death, millions are now condemned to suffer to the end,
to drain the last bitter dregs of aU the agony disease can inflict
on them.

The objections and naisgivings are baseless. The law could
create protective provisions against any possible abuse. The
administration of such painless death for hopelessly incurable
and suffering people could be made dependent first of all on the
consent of themselves and their nearest, and then it could go be-
fore a collegium of doctors and judges, whose decision, after
having heard all the facts of the case, would be final. And if
even such precautions seem inadequate, then still others could
be worked out, but for the sake of humanity such wretched
fellow human beings should be given the right to free themselves
from their useless agonies. To-day there is no State anywhere in
the world which has shown this merciful understanding. No

560

A Doctor^ s Dialogues

legislature anywhere has yet had sufficient courage to place the
legal seal on an elementary and thoroughly justified demand of
our common humanity.

I have fought for this legalization of euthanasia for as long as
the problem has been practically before my eyes. At the death-
bed of the long and terribly suffering Frau Luther I thought
that fate had given me the chance of striking the first breach in
the wall of comfortable inertia which prevented a humane solu-
tion of the problem. The political situation in Germany in 1923
was uniquely favourable for the legislative acceptance of such a
humane solution, and here was the wife of the Reich’s Chancel-
lor dying in agony before his eyes, dying in useless and un-
necessary torments, suffering as much as any human being can
ever suffer. I was mistaken. My dream was not to be realized.
Or not then. Luther had the power. The political constellation
was more favourable than ever before. The German Reichstag
was liberal and progressive in its ideas. But no. We discussed
the matter from every possible angle with the agonizing case of
Luther’s own wife before his eyes, and I summoned up all the
eloquence I possessed to urge the case, but in vain. Although
the husband suffered, the statesman refused to act. Frau Luther
died, and Luther’s conscience was no longer torn with the sight
of her sufferings. I had to get over a bitter disappointment. But
the fight for euthanasia still goes on, and some day it will be
successful.

561

INDEX

Abortions, secret, 531
Accumulation, 529
Activity, 481

Addison, Sir Joseph, minister, 189, 190,

A(Ser, psychoanalyst, 18
Adlon, Hotel, 304, 305
Adolescence, 459
A.E.G., 138, 141, 216
^Etiology of infectious diseases, 70
Affinities, 520
Ageing, 558

Agghdzy, Carl, music paedagogue, 59,
329-330

Agnetendorf, 304
Albert Hall, 330, 352
Alcohol, 49, 550
Alcoholic drinks, 554
Aldovrandi, ambassador, 194, 195
Alexander, 292
Allopathy, 507

“Alpenkoenig und Menschenfeind”,
287

Alsatians, 69
Alter ego, 468

Althoff, ministerial director, 80,

130, 220, 222
Alt-Ofen, II
Alving, Oswald, 540
Ambros, 350
Amphion, 332

Analysis, pharmaco-chemical, 549
Angriff, Berliner, 167
Animal, instincts, 469
Animal rapiens, 545
Ansorge, pianist, 322, 325
Antagonistic force, 483
Anthaeus legend, 397, 450
Anti-nicotine literature, 553
Antoine, art critic, 262, 269, 274
Anton, professor, 517
Aphrodisiac, 526
Apollo, 332
Apoplexy, 475
Appendix operation, 470
Apponyi, Count Albert, 327
Aquincum baths, 30
Arad, 60

Aravantinos, stage designer, 289
Archbishop of Canterbury, 403
562

Archer, William, 270
Aristotle, 530

Armistice Commission, 108
Arnold, Victor, actor, 288, 292
Arrhenius, Svante, Professor, 31, 228
Arteries, chalk in the, 506
Arterioatonie, 506
Arterio-sclerosis, 504, 505
Aschheim-Zondek pregnancy reaction,
528

Assimilation, 468

“Asthmatic writing”, 52 1

Auer Company, 227

Auer, Count von, inventor, 227

Austrian Archaeological Society, 126

Automatic functions, 468

Bacelli, Guido, Professor, minister, 37
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 214, 540
Back, Adolf, violinist, 58
Baden, 106

Baden Aniline and Soda Works, 231
Baden, Max von. Prince, Chancellor,
109

Baginsky, Professor, pediatrist, 85
Bakody, Lajos, Professor, homoeopath,

511

Ballin, Albert, Hamburg-America Line
director, 102

Balogh, Professor, Tihamer, homoeo-
path, 51 1

Bamberger, Professor, 70
Barbiturates, 488
Barbizon School, 123, 358
Bamay-Ludwig, theatre director, 265
Bamowsky, Victor, theatre director,
266

Baron, 266

Baross, Gabriel, minister, 15, 29
Barrie, playwright, 300
Barsini, Professor, editor, 520
Bartok, B6la, composer, 325, 326, 327,
333

Basedow, 458

Bassermann, Albert, actor, 266, 269, 272

Bataszeky, Ludwig, journalist, 278

Bathing, 496

Battle of the Aisne, 103

Battle of the Marne, 105

Bauer, 129

Index

Bavaria, loG, 123
Bayer, Chemical Works, 416
Bayreuth, 294, 328

B.B.C. Symi^hony Orchestra, 351, 443
Beaumarchais, 355
Becker, Carl, minister, ii, 132, 134
Becquerel, Henry, physicist, 66, 67, 277
Beecham, Sir Thomas, conductor, 443
Beethoven, Ludwig von, 188, 340, 350,
351. 358, 372j 380, 385, 427, 540
“Before Sundown”, 305
“Before Sunrise”, 302
“Beggar’s Opera”, 275
Behrens, Peter, architect, 160, 295, 296
Bemberg, dancing, 282
Bergius, Professor, chemist, 231
Bergmann, Ernst von. Excellency,
surgeon professor, 45, 80, 84, 517
Bergner, Elizabeth, actress, 299, 300,
301, 313

Bergson, philosopher, 292, 521
Berlin cookery, 449

Berliner Tageblatt, 163, 164, 165, 271,
302

Berliner Theater, 265, 314
Bemauer, theatre director, 265, 291
Bernhard, Georg, editor, 165, 166
Bemsdorf, Count, ambassador, 109
Bernstein, Henry, playwright, 277
Berthelot, Marcelin, chemist,* 519
Bethlen, Count Istvin, Minister Presi-
dent, 198, 199
Beutner, laborant, 416
Beyens, de, ambassador, 193
Bier-Abend, n8

Bier, August, surgeon professor, 84, 1 16,

517

Bilroth, surgeon professor, 42, 333,

347» 517 , o

Bircher-Benner, dietist, 389
Birth-control, 530, 532, 533
Birthmarks, 456
Birthrate, 532

Bismarck J^iirst von, 143, 182, 402, 421
Bjoernson, Bjomsterne, playwright, 277,
289

Black Forest, no
Black Friday, 393, 394
Blackmailer, 544
Blaha, Louise, singer, 57
Bleeding, 68
Bleidroeder, banker, 63
Blood-letting, 409, 502
Blood pressure, 502
Blood volume, 502
“Blue Angel”, 318
Blumreich, gynaecologist, 97

Boas, Professor, 84, 493, 517
Bocaccio, 334

Boess, Mayor of Berlin, 212, 224
Bologna, 39

Boni-Gastellane, Marshal, 183
Bordet, serologist, 91, 92
Borodin, composer, 244
Bosch, Carl, director of I.G. Farben.,
231

Bosdari, Count, ambassador, 194
Bosdari, Countess, 194
Bosnian-Herzegovinian Regiment, 359
Boston Symphony Orchestra, 58
Boswell, author, 75
Botticelli, 532

Boult, Sir Adrian, conductor, 443
Boxer, 487
“Boy David”, 300

Brahm, Otto, theatre director, 247,
262, 265, 269, 270, 272, 274, 302
Brahms, Johannes, composer, 329, 333
Brain, receptivity of the, 556
Brandenburg Gate, 1 1 1 ^

Braun, Otto, Prime Minister, 122

Breeding, rational, 539

Brehmer, Dr, 48

Brest-Litovsk, 144

Breuer, physiologist, 513

Briand, Foreign Mister, 191

Bricarelli, Father, Carlo, 106, 169

Brieux, playwright, 277

“British by Birth”, 450

Brown-Sequard, physiologist, 517

Brunswick, iii

Brussilow Offensive, 103

Bucharin, philosopher of the Soviet,

251

Buda, 25

Budapest National Theatre, 195
Bumm, Professor, gynaecologist, 84
Burghardt, Professor, archaeologist, 1 34,

135

Burkhardt, Jakob, Professor, art his-
torian, 345
Burgimdy, 550
Burlington Gallery, 426
Bums, Robert, poet, 491
Burroughs-Wellcome Institute, 96
Burton, Montagu, 357
Busch, Fritz, conductor, 349, 350, 356
Busoni, pianist and composer, 325
Byron, Lord, poet, 383, 489, 539

“Cabinet of Dr Caligari”, 313
Caffeine, 553

Calderon, playwright, 124
Gambon, ambassador, 190

563

Index

Cambridge, 400

Cambridge blue, 486

Cannon-fodder, 544

Cantonal School, Aarau, 219

Caputh on the Havel, 226

Carenno, pianist, 325

Carlsbad, 173

Carlyle, 440

“Carmen”, 368, 369

Carmi, Maria, actress, 273

Caro, Nicodem, chemist, 230

Carolat, Prince, 176, 183

Carson, Professor, physiologist, 39

Caruso, singer, 291, 328, 362, 365, 484

Case-history, 456

Casper, Professor, urologist, 97, 156
Cassella & Co., chemical works, 95
Cassirer, Bruno, Verlag, 373
Castelbarco, Count, painter, 349
Castration, 549
Catalysis, 509

“Catherine the Great”, 256, 313
Catholic Centre, 105
Catholic Church, 106
Cellulose, 493
Celsus, 418

Cerutti, ambassador, 195
Cezanne, painter, 124
Chaliapine, singer, 244, 362
Chamberlain, Prime Minister, 300
Chamfort, poet, 334, 529
Chaplin, film actor, 291, 292, 316
Charcot, Professor, neurologist, 73,
425,458

Charity, 48, 76, 87, 94

Charity hospitals, 419

Charlottenburg Hospital, 43

Chiteau d’lf, 519

Chemotherapy, 75, 508

Chicago, 39

Chiromancy, 521

Chiropractitioners, 509

Chloral-hydrate, 488

Chopin, composer, 128, 325, 361, 540

Christ, 375

Christian Science, 481, 509, 512
Class distinction, 65
Claudel, poet, 356
Cleving, Carl, actor, 291
Cochran, G. B., impressario, 273, 293,
444,445

Coffee, 549, 553, 554
Cognac, 550

Cognition, theory of, 480
Coitus per anum,^ 543
Cologne Fasching, 436
“Columbus”, 356

564

CombusJ;ion, 478, 479
Commando, 439
Commons, House of, 426
Gompi^gne, no
Conception, 530, 533
Concordat, 157
Condottieri, 122

Constantin, Leopoldine, actress, 266
Constipation, 493
Contraception, 529, 530
Co-ordinating forces, 483
Corneille, poet, 370
Corriera della sera, 520
Corzan, Avendano Gabriel, director,
58

Cos, island of, 418
Cosinus 246
Cosmetics, 500
Gossio, 125

Cotton, Henry, golfer, 484
Gou^ism, 481

“Count of Monte Cristo”, 519
Court, the, 426
Cova, restaurant, 327
Cracow, 522, 523

Craig, Gordon, artist, 274, 289, 293,
435

Cranach, Lukas, painter, 128
Groce, Benedetto, philosopher, 206
Gryptorchism, 456
Csiky, Albin, Count, minister, 29
Cuckoo, 334
Gupido, 526

Curie, Madame, physicist, 66, 67
Curie, Pierre, physicist, 67
Curve, recuperative, 487
Cycle, eternal, 554
Cyclical period, 555
Cycling, 485
Czar, 184

Czar Fiodor Ivanovitch, 254
Czebrian, Countess, 330
Czerny, 329

Czerny, Adalbert, Professor, pediatrist,
84, 485

Czukor, film producer, 314

D’ Abernon, Lord, ambassador, 1 89,
190

Dahlcm, 129

D’Albert, pianist, 214, 325, 344
Dancing, 484

Dandin, Georges (Moli6re), 292
D’Andrade, baritone singer, 366
Dardnyi, ignaez, minister, 29
Darwin, Charles, 514
Davies, 435

Index

Davos, 50, 499
Death, 554, 558
Death, easy, 559

de Bassini, Professor, surgeon, 37, 517
de Broglie, physicist, 234
Debussy, composer, 333
“Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire”, 331
de Giovaimi, Professor, 37
Del Sarto, Pope Pius X, 169, 171
Delacroix, painter, 374
deMargerie, pere, ambassador, 190, 1 91
de Margerie, Mme, 191
Democracy, 451
Democratic party, 118
Democritus, 292
Denham, 31 1, 314
Depression, maniac, 494
Dermography, 457
Descartes, 514

Deutsch, Felix, 138, 141, 142, 342
Deutsch, Frau, 138

Deutsches Theater, 265, 269, 270, 273,
282, 283, 288, 290
Diabetes, 65, 445
Diagnosis, 455, 456
Diagnostic mtuition, 456
“Die Rauber”, 289
“Die Weber”, 279, 307
DiefFenbach, painter, 386, 387, 388,

389* 390

Diesel, 358
Diet, 470

Dietrich, Marlene, film actress, 264,

30% 316, 3 I 7 » 318, 319

Digestive processes, 468, 471
Dircksen von, ambassador, 162, 257
Discharge, 529
Discus-Crowing, 484
Distension, 493
“Doctor’s Dilemma”, 82, 269
Doeberitz, 159
Doederlein, 541

Dohndnyi, Ernst von, pianist, 325, 326

Dolce far niente, 38

“Doll’s House”, 272

Domag, Professor, 94

“Don Giovanni”, 349

“Donjuan”, 355

“Don Quixote”, 253

Donat, Robert, actor, 318

Donatello, sculptor, 37

Doom, Haus, 177, 178, 182, 189

“Doss House”, 285

Doyle, Conan, 236

Dozent, Private-, 78

“Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, 149

Dreams, analysis, 515
Dresden, opera, 349
Dubedat, 82

Duerer, Albrecht, painter, 441
Duisberg, Carl, industrialist, 395
Dumas, Alexandre, playwright, 519
Dumas, playwright, 355
Durig, Arnold, Professor, 97
Duse, Eleanora, actress, 264
Dvorak, composer, 128, 329, 442
Dying, process of, 560
Dysentery, 475

Ebert, Carl, 356
Ebert, Frau, 1 16

Ebert, Reichspresident, 109, 115, 162,
Echegaray, playwright, 277
Eclectic, 508
Edelweiss, H6tel, 342
Edinburgh, 431
Edward, Prince of Wales, 436
Egocentric, 557
Egyptologist, 135
Ehrenfest, Paul, 227, 233
Ehrenhaft, Felix, 233, 234
Ehrlich, Paul, 43, 51, 84, 85, 87, 93, 94,
95» 98

Eibenschuetz, Camilla, 266, 287
Eibenschuetz, Ilona, pianist, 322
Eichelbaum, Dr, 416
Einstein, Albert, 31, 129, 134, 148, 153,
200, 224, 231, 234, 235, 325, 340, 381,
399» 514,

Einstein, Elsa, 200, 206, 2 ii, 212, 213,
220

Eiselsberg, Professor, 517
Eitel, Friedrich, Prince, 175
Ekdal, Hjalmar, 266
Electrotherapy, 508
“Elektra”, 288
Elgar, Sir Edward, 443
Elstree, 314

Embryonic position, 556
Emerson, 41 7
Emetic, tartar, 494
Emetics, 490, 494
Enema pump, 493
Engelmann, Professor, 84
English cooking, 445
English theatre, 443
Englishman by naturalization, 452
Environment, 468
Enzyme processes, 478
Erkel, Franz, 327, 328, 330
Erie, Father Cardinal, 174
Erzberger, Matthias, 105, 107, 108, 109,
no, 1 12, 130, 145, 157, 158

565

Index

“Erzberger Office”, io8
‘‘Eugen Onegin”, 246
Eunuchoid, 547
Euphoria, prasmortal, 560
Euripides, 332
Euthanasia, 559, 561
Evacuation, 471, 491
Everts, Robert, ambassador, 193
Ewald, Professor, 84
Exercise, 486
Exhaustion, 484
Exner, Professor, 42
Expectation of life, 486
‘‘Eyes of the Mummy”, 312
Eysoldt, Gertrud, 266, 272, 288

Face lifting, 501
Faithfulness, 538
Falkenhayn, 103
“Falstaff”, 297, 350
Faraday, 408, 435
Faraglioni, 387, 389
Farkas, Blanche von, 59
Farrere, Claude, poet, 189
Fasting, 68, 490
“Father, The”, 344

Fatigue as a measure of constitution, 71
“Faust”, 287

“Favourite Wife of the Maharajah”,

Favre, 520

Fecundity, 529

Feder, economist, 165

Fehling, Professor, 51 1, 525

Fehme, 122

“Feldscher”, 23

Ferenczy, director, 265

Fermenting, 478

Festspiele, 297, 298

Fever, 503

“Fidelio”, 297, 355

Field punishment, 35

“Figaro”, 355

Finkelstein, Professor, 85

Fischer, Emil, Professor, 135, 488

Fischer, Samuel, publisher, 265, 266

“Five Geese”, 392

Flatulence, 492

“Florian Geyer”, 273, 303, 307

Fluegge, Professor, 499

Foch, Marshal, 109

Food, 466, 467, 468

Foodstuffs, 468

“Footlights Man”, 262

Ford, Edsel, 314

Foreign Office, 426

Forel, Professor, 448

566

Fouquet, Restaurant, 318
“Four-footed animals”, 533
Fox, 314

Fraenkel, Albert, 84
France, 107

Franciscus, St, Hospital, 97, 174
Frank, Boriska, 57

Frankfurter 163, 166, 352

Franz Joseph, Kaiser, 60

“Free Stage”, 270

“Freie Buehne”, 269, 302

Freie Wissenschaftliche Vereinigung, 47

French Academy, 519

Frerichs, 62, 65

Fresh air, 498

Freud, i8, s66, 267, 454, 513, 515, 517,
523> 526
Frick, 1 18

Friedenskirche in Ludwigshafen, 380
Friedlaender (family), 125, 140
Friedlaender, Max, Professor, 125
Friedmann, 131, 266
Friedrichstrasse, 112
Frintz, Monsignore, Dr, 94, 174
Fuerstenberg, Carl, banker, 102, 114,
120

“Fuhrmann Henschel”, 305, 307
Full blood, 539
Furbinger, Professor, 84
Furtwaengler, Wilhelm, conductor, 307,
^ 349 » 352
Fusel, 550

Galen, Count Bishop, 418
Galileo, 37
Gall stones, 65
Gallenus, 424
Galli-Curci, singer, 328
Gallipoli, 108
Gallmeyer, actress, 263
Gambctta, 12 1
Gamoff, physicist, 237
Gans, Adolf, industrialist, lit
Gans, Fritz von, industrialist, 1 1 1
Gans, Leo, industrialist, 1 1 1
Garbo, Greta, film actress, 316
Garlic Sanatorium, 329
Gas-analysis apparatus, 499
Gastein, 232

Gaul, August, sculptor, 386, 391, 392,
^393

Gauss, yon, ambassador, 163, 210
Genersich, Professor, anatomist 33
Gengou, Professor, bacteriologist, 91, 92
George V, King, 436
George VI, King, 436, 437
George, Stefan, poet, 132

Index

Gerard, ambassador, 192
Gerhardt, G., Professor, 44, 46, 87,
94

German Reichstag, 561
German Republic, 559
Gersuny, Professor, 501
“Gesellschaft der Aerzte”, 513
^‘Ghosts”, 272, 540
Gibbon, 331

Gigli, Benj amino, singer, 330
Gigolo, 523
Gilbert, Parker, 192
Gills, rudimentary, 456
Gioconda, 385
Giotto, 345
“ Giovinezza ”, 195
Gland, intermediate, 527
Gland, para-thyroid, 517
Glands, digestive, 552
Glands, sebaceous, 497
Glazounov, composer, 244
Gluck, Themistocles, Professor, 97
Glycogens, 479
“God Save the King”, 450
Goebbels, minister, ii8, 119, 165, 166,
167, 225

Goeben, Major, 537
Goemboes, Julius, Prime Minister, 198,
199, 200

Goerbersdorf, 48
Goergei, Arthur, General, 60
Gocring, Marshal, 396
Goethe, 191, 267, 303, 304, 382, 4
520, 534, 539
Goethe Prize, 514
“Golden Age”, 254
Goldmark, Carl, composer, 13
Goldoni, playwright, 124
Goldscheider, Professor, 85
Goldschmidt, 129
Goldschmidt, Jakob, banker, 393
Goldwyn, producer, 314
Golf, 4^4

Gorki, Maxim, playwright, 124, i.
277, 285

Gospel of St John, 375
“Gott erhalte”, 1 7
Goulasch, 25
Gout, 475, 494 ^

Goya, painter, 382
Gracian, Pater, 458
Graefe, Professor, oculist, 33, 85
Grammar School, Aylesbury, 400
Grandi, ambassador, 196
Graphology, 522
Gravitz, Professor, 84

517

Greco, painter, 124
Grew, ambassador, 192
Griesinger, Professor, neurology, 374,
Grimm brothers, 327
Grock, clown, 292
Groener, General, 158
Grosses Schauspielhaus, 280, 283
Gruenberg, Josef, 148, 21 1, 235, 372,

379. 380, 386

Gruenfeld, Alfred, pianist, 325
Guardian Angel, 556
Guards, 426

Guel Baba, Mohamedan Saint, 13
Guilbert, Yvette, diseuse, 275
Gumpoldskirchner, wine 513
Guttmann, banker, 195
Gwinner, Arthur, banker, 154
Gymnastics, 482, 486

Haber, Fritz, Professor, physico chemist,
129, 148, 150, 153, 202, 220, 221,
227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232
Habsburg, House of, 198
Habsburg Monarchy, 17, 263
Habsburg tyranny, 16
Haemodynamics, 69
Haendel, composer, 128, 442
Haenisch, minister, 130, 132
Hagen brothers, 309
Hahn, Kurt, educational expert, 129,
399

Hahnemann, homeopath, 509, 510
Haldane, physiologist, 76, 415
Half-breed, 539
Haller, theatre director, 266
Halmay, actor, 287
Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 163
Hamilton, Lady, 12
“Hamlet”, 264, 520
Hamm, Johann, biologist, 530
Hamsun, Knut, playwright, 289
Handicraftsman, 485
“Hand Oracle”, 458
Hand-writing, 521
“Hanneles Himmelfahrt”, 303, 307
Hannover, 106
Hard palm, 456
“Harley Street Doctor”, 429
Hamack, Excellency, President of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Association, 1 29, 1 74,
222

Harris, Frank, 534

Hartleben, Otto Erich, poet, 38, 265,
386

Hartmann, Edward von, physiologist,

513

Harrow School, 399

567

Index

Harvey, physiologist, 415
Hatzfeld, Prince, 186
Haughton, ambassador, 192
Hauptmann, Benvenuto, 306
Hauptmaim, Carl, 302
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 123, 159, 261,
265, 272, 273, 277, 278, 291, 301, 302,
303, 30^ 305, 306, 307
Haus Hainerberg, 126
Hausmann, Alois, architect, 27
Havanas, 551

Haydn, composer, 17, 353, 427, 442
Hayek, Professor, 42
Hayem, haemotologist, 43
Hayes Court School, 399
Heart, 481

“ Heart Disease writing ”, 521
Hebra, Professor, dermatologist, 33
Hedin, Sven, explorer, 302
Hegelian maxim, 355
Heidenhain, Professor, physiologist,

517

Heimann, Moritz, lector, 265, 266
Heims, Elsa, actress, 278, 288, 296
Heine, 539

Helmholtz, Professor, physiologist, 138

Helphand, editor, 143, 144

Helsingfors, 237

Herba mattie, 496

Hereditary factors, 531

Hermine, Princess of Reuss, 185

Heroic methods, 491

Heroic specifics of medicine, 68

Heroism, 103, 476

Herz, 140

Heterosexual disinclination, 542
Heubner, Professor, pediatrist, 84
“Heurigen”, 26

Heyermanns, playwright, 124, 277
Heymann, Professor, laryngologist, 78,
82

Hiddensee, 304, 305
“High blood pressure”, 505
Hildebrand, Professor, surgeon, 84
Hilferding, Dr, Reichsfinanzminister,

155

Hindenburg, Fieldmarshal von, Reichs-
president, iii, 117, 306, 395, 396
Hippocratic collection, 418
Hirschberg, Professor, oculist, 85
Hitler, Adolf, 113, 114, 115, 117, n8,

162, 163, 167, 191, 195, 196, 197,

200, 224, 225, 226, 230, 300; 302,

304, 305, 335» 386, 395 , 396, 54ij

547

Hoechster Farbwerken, 50
Hoeflich, Lucie, actress, 266, 267
568

Hoegyes, Professor, serologist, 33
Hoerlein, 94

Hoffmann, General, 131, 144
Hoffmansthal, von, playwright, 123,
357

Hofmeister, Professor, physico-chemist,
69 » 73

Hohenfels, Stella, actress, 263
Hohenheim, Theophrastus Bombastus
Paracelsus de, 494
Hohenzollern, 123, 175
Holbein, painter, 128
Hollaender, Felix, critic and producer,
265, 286
Hollywood, 3 1 1
Holmes, Sherlock, 236
Holt, Harold, impressario, 443
Home Office, 403
Homo sapiens, 545
Homo solitarins, 526
Homoeopathy, 1 16, 507, 509, 510
Homoeopathy in Budapest, 51 1
Homosexual inclination, 542
Homosexuality, 542, 543, 547
Homosexuality, hereditary, 544, 546
Homosexuals, 537

Hopkins, Professor, bio-chemist, 415
Horizon, 280
Hormones, 464

Horthy, Nicolaus, Regent, Admiral,
198

Hospidale Civile, 37

Hdtel Dieu, 48

House of Commons, 509

Hubay, Eugen, violinist, 329, 330

Hubermann, Bronislav, violinist, 333,

346. 347. 348

Hugenberg, minister, 164
Hugo, Victor, poet, 261, 355
Humperdinck, composer, 273
Hungarian National Anthem, 327
Hungarian revolt, 60
Hungary, 167
Hunger, 468

Hunter, surgeon-anatomist, 415
“Huntingdale”, 300
Hunyady, J^nos, 30
Hutt, Lolo, 378
Hydropress, 372
Hydrostatic pressure, 504
Hydrotherapy, 496
Hypersensitive reactions, 547
Hypertrophy, 482
Hypervitamin ailments, 464
Hypervitaminosis, 131
Hypochondriac, 491, 492
Hypospasiasis, 456

Ibsen, 82, 124, 264, 266, 271, 272, 273,

277. 539

I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G., 166, 395
Illegitimate birth, 530
Imaginative intuition, 456
Immorality, 523
Immunology, 74
Immunotherapy, 510
Imperial Board of Health, 51
Impotence, 528
Impotentia caundi, 541
Impotentia generandi, 541
Impregnation, 539
Incandescent gas mantle, 227
Individualization, 482
Infantry Regiment No. 6, 34
Influe^a, 475
Insemination, artificial, 541
Insomnia, 487
Instinct of Life, 454
Instincts, 520, 538
Institut Fran5ais, 192
Insulin, 65

International Physiological Congress,

527

Intestinal canal, 471
Involution, 557
Ipecacuanha, 494
Irkutsk, 250
Iron Cross, 103
Isaszeg, 60
Israel, 517
Israels, 384
‘‘It’s in the Air”, 317
lusprima noctis, 539
Izrael, 85

Jaksch, Professor, 73
Jannings, Emil, actor, 316
Jdszai, Marie, actress, 56, 57
Javelin-throwing, 484
Jenner, immunologist, 415
Jessner, theatre director, 266
Jesuit fathers, 534

JofF6, Abraham, Professor, 146, 227,

234. 235. 236, 337, 246
Johamisberger Schlossabzug, 149, 1 50
Johanssen, Sigrid, singer, 141
Johnson, Dr, 270
Jones, Burne-, 440
Josephinum, 23
Jordan, Paul, architect, 138
Joule, Professor, 435
Jubilee, 436
Jueterbog, 159
“Jugend” style, 123, 295
Jung methods, 515

Index

Kahane, Arthur, lector, 265, 286
Kahler, Professor, 73
Kahn, Otto H., banker, 141
Kainz, Josef, actor, 266, 272
Kaiser, 102, 184, 189, 228
Kaiser Friedrich, 44, 1 1 1
Kaiser Friedrich Museum, 134
Kaiser, Georg, 317
Kaiser Karl, 198
Kaiser Wilhelm, 115, 130
Kaiser Wilhelm Association, 222
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, 97, 201, 220,
228, 332

Kaiser Wilhelm Society, 129
Kaiserin Hermine, 175, 176, 179
Kaiserin Viktoria, 1 76, 1 78
Kalkreuth, Gounl^ painter, 384
Kammerspiele, 282
Kant, Emanuel, 480, 514
Kapitza, Professor, 237
“Karenina, Anna”, 56
Karlsbad, 353

“Kater Hidigeigei”, 386, 389
KatschalofF, actor, 244
Kelvin, Lord, 408, 435
Kempinsky Restaurant, 124
Kent, Duke of, 436
Kerensky, politician, 144
Kerr, Alfred, art critic, 271, 357
Kerr, surgeon, 42 1
Ketly, Professor, 41 1
Keynes, Lord, 206
K6zmarszky, Professor, 33
Kidney-shrinkage, 475
Kindness, 558

King Friedrich Wilhelm, 45
“King Lear”, 267, 299, 334
Klein, Cesar, painter, 313
Kleiner, Professor, 220
Kleines Theater, 266, 282
Kleinitz, 183, 184, 185
Klemperer, Professor, 85
Klinda, Teophil, Monsignor, i68
Klinger, sculptor, 123
Klug, F., Professor, 33
Knack, actor, 292
Kneipp, Pastor, 496
“Knight Without Armour”, 318
Knina, Gustav, 262, 279, 280, 283, 289,
290

Knocke, 217

Koch, Robert, Institute for Infectious
Diseases, 91, 93

Koch, Robert, Professor, 31, 50, 87,

251

Kochcr, Dr Professor, 517

569

Index

Kodily, Zoltan, composer, 325, 326,

327

Koelnische Zeitmg^ 163
Koenig, Professor, 84
Koeniggraetzerstrasse Theater, 106
Komigsberger Allegemeine 163,

Koenigstein im Jaunus, no

Koerte, Professor, 85

Kokoschka, Oskar, Professor, painter,

371. 372. 385

Komarom, 60

Kopdesy, Juliska, actress, 57
Koppel, Leopold, banker, I02, 173,
227, 228

Koranyi, Alexander, Professor, 517
Korda, Sir Alexander, producer, 307,
314, 318, 321, 323
Korda, Vincent, painter, 314
Korda, Zoltdn, producer, 314
Kossuth, Lajos, 29, 60
Kovdes, Robert, director, 33
“Kraemerspiegel”, 141
Krafft-Ebing, 536
Kranzler Corner, 112
Kraus, Friedrich, Professor, 71, 72, 73,
79, 80, 82, 88, 145, 521
Krause, Fedor, Professor, 85
Krauss, Werner, actor, 266, 305
Krehl, Ludolf, Professor, 72
Kreisler, Ella, 334

Kreisler, Fritz, 148, 214, 323, 324, 330,
333, 334, 335, 33^, 337, 338, 339,
340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 348
Kreisler, Harriet, 336, 343
Kreisler, Hugo, ’cellist, 335, 336, 341,

342,.

Kremlin, 253, 254
Krestinsky, ambassador, 146, 194
Kreuzzeitmgi 163

Kroenig, Professor, gynaecologist, 541
Krupp, von Bohlem Halbach, 100
Kfzenek, composer, 333
Kussmaul, Professor, 494, 517

Lambeth Qualification, 403
Lamond, Frederik, pianist, 322
Lancut estate, 183

Landau, Professor, mathematician, 96
Landou^, M.D., 329, 390
Lapponi, M.D., 171
L’Aronge, director, 265, 270, 288
Ldszlo, Philip de, painter, 324
Laue, Professor, physicist, 136, 202,
219

Laufer, Philip, painter, 324
Laughton, Charles, actor, 264, 321

570

Lautenburg, Sigmund, theatre director,
266

Law of accommodation, 468
Lawrence, St, 82

Lazarus, Professor, hsematologist, 73, 84
League of Nations, 120
Le Bon, philosopher, 292
Leeuwenhoek, scientist, 530
Lehdr, Franz, composer, 339, 359, 360
Lehmann, Else, actress, 267, 272
Leibl, painter, 384
Leigh, Aurora, 539
Lemonade, 447

L6ndrt, Professor, physicist, 137
Lengyel, Melchior, playwright, 291,
331

Lenin, 252, 332
Leningrad, 242, 256
Leonardo da Vinci, 385
Leopoldskron, Schloss, 284, 286
Lequio, Francesco, ambassador, 195,
196

Lesbians, 537, 543
Leschetitsky, music paedagogue, 323
Lessing, G. E., poet, 270
Lessing Theater, 265, 278"

Leuna Ghe^^cal Works, 231
Levin, Willi, merchant, 357
Leyden, Ernst von, 45, 425
Leyden University, 222
Vhomme qui assassina, 189
Lichnowsky, ambassador, 427
Lido, 357

Liebermann, Max, painter, 123, 140,
37L 372, 383^ 384, 385, 386
"Liebesleid”, 341

Liebknecht, Karl, revolutionary, iii
Liebreich, Professor, pharmacologist,
488

Life, vegetative, 469
Life, unconscious, 469
Lindsay, ambassador, 189
Lindsay, Lady, 190
Lion, Mr, ii
Lister, Lord, 517

Liszt, Franz, pianist-composer, 128,

2i4» 322, 323, 3255 358

Litten, pathologist^ 84
Liverish, 472
Lloyds Register, 331
Locarno Treaty, 120, 151, 152
Locke, philosopher, 514
Locker-Lampson, Commander, M.P.,
218

Loebe, Paul, Reichstagspresident, 119
Loerke, Oscar, poet, qSS
Loewenfeld, Beate, 282, 283

Index

Loewi, Mr, 1 1
LokaUAnzeiger^ Berliner, 163
Lombroso, philosopher, 38
Longinus, 375

Lorenz, Professor, mathematician, 222,

233

Lourdes, 512
Louvre, 49, 332
“Low blood pressure”, 505
Lubitsch, producer, 307, 312, 314
Luciani, Professor, physiologist, 38, 41,
520

LudendorfF, General, 104, 112, 140
Ludwig, Emil, author, 33, 62, 181,

305

Ludwig, King of Bavaria, 387
Lunatcharsky, People’s Commissar,
247, 252, 276
Luther, Frau, 559, 561
Luther, Reich’s Chancellor, 153, 155,
559» 561 ^

Luxembourg, Palais du, 49
Luxemburg, Rosa, iii
Lyric, 536

“Macbeth”, 356

MacDonald, Ramsay, Prime Minister,
189

MacKenzie, Morrel, laryngologist, 44
“Madame I3ubarry”, 312
Mader, Raoul, conductor, 328
Maeterlinck, poet,* 277
“Magic Flute”, 355
Magna Carta Libertatis, 26
Mahler, Gustav, conductor, 297, 328,
353»354. 355

Makowiczky, Dusan, M.D., 55
“Malade Imaginaire”, 296
Malformation, 533
Malta fever, 43
Malvern, 294

Mamroth, Paul, industrialist, 138
Manet, painter, 385
Manfred, 489

Mann, Heinrich, author, 165

Mannheim, Lucie, actress, 266

Marchiafava, Professor, pathologist, 171

Marconi, physicist, 408

Maria Theresa, 526

Marina, 436

Mark, Gospel of, 375

Mark, singer, 43

Marlowe, playwright, 124

Marquardt, 140

Marr, Hans, actor, 272

Marriage, 524, 525, 534

Marriage of mutual interest, 535

Marriages, arranged, 535
Marriages, childless, 533
Marriages per procuram, 535
Marseille, 519

Martin, Professor, gynaecologist, 181,
182

Masar^^k, Thomas, State President, 55
Masochism, 525

Massary, Fritzi, actress, 266, 292
Masturbation, 545
Maternal instinct, 531
Matray, dancer, 287
Matteine, 496
Matthew, Gospel of, 375
Mauser, Carl, weapon manufacturer,
100

Maxw^ell, Elsa, 358, 435

Maxwell, physicist, 217

May, architect, 248

Mayer, Councillor of Zuerich, 219

Mayfair House, 441

Medea, 57

Medelsky, actress, 263
Medical Council, General, 403
Medical history of a patient, 455
Medora, 539

Mehring, Professor, {pathologist, 65, 135
Meier-Graefe, art critic, 125
Meinhardt, Willy, industrialist, 216,
265, 291

Meiningen, Duke of, 261
Meissner, Secretary of State, 117, 118,
306

Meitner, Liese, physicist, 129

Mellon, Andrew, 192

Mendeleieff, Professor, chemist, 358

Mendelian Law, 457

Mendelssohn, composer, 140, 288

Mental capacity, 558

Menuhin, Yehudi, violinist, 330, 333,

339. 348, 349

Menzel, Adolf, graphic artist, 384
M6ro, Yolanda, pianist, 325
Mery del Val, Cardinal, Secretary of
State, 173

Metabolism, animal, 65
Meteorism, 493
Methylene blue, 75, 94
Metropoltheater, 266
Metternich, Furst, Chancellor, 150
Mettemich, Princess Melanie, 149
Meyer, film producer, 314
Michael, Grand Duke, 183
“Michael Kramer”, 303
Micielszky, Coimt, 197
“Midsummer Night’s Dream”, 287, 288
Migai, baritone singer, 243, 244, 246

571

Index

Mignon, 539

Mihalkovics, G^za, Professor, anato-
mist, 33

Mikulicz, Radelzky von, Professor,
surgeon, 517
Milhaud, composer, 356
Military Range at Halensee, 10 1
Milk, 470

Minimum calorific intake, 462
Minkowsky, Professor, pathologist, 65
“Miracle”, 273, 293
“Mixed Pickle Club”, 40
Mneme, 467
Modernism, 172

Moebius, Professor, psychiatrist, 20
Moesle, Secretary of State, 158
Moissi, Alexander, actor, 266, 267, 268,
269

Mole, teleangiectatic, 456
Molidre, playwright, 124, 292, 296
Molnar, Franz, playwright, 22, 2 77
Mond Laboratory, 237
Monet, Claud, painter, 124, 384
Monte, Rosa, 41

More, Sir Thomas, scientist, 324
Morgagni, biologist, 37, 41
Morris, William, art critic, 123, 435,
440

Moscow, 243, 246, 248, 256
Moses, 68

Moskin, actor, 243, 244
Mosse, Rudolf, publisher, 163, 165
Mosshammer, harpist, 328
Mosso, Professor, physiologist, 41
Mother instinct, 530
Motorists, 556

Mozart, Amadeus, 297, 349, 350, 353,
356,381,427

Muck, Carl, conductor, 327
Mueller, Friedrich, Professor, patholo-
gist, 72

Mueller, Hermann, Chancellor, 120,
146

Mueller, Johannes, physiologist, 63
Mueller organ, 20
Munck, Professor, physiologist, 517
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, 290
Munk Professor, brain anatomist, 97
Murder, 476

Mussolini, 196, 304, 340, 352, 437,
54*7

Myasthenia, 481
Mystic forces, 518
Mysticism, mediaeval, 75
Mythology, 556

Nadolovitch, music paedagoguc, 364

572

Naples, 37
Napoleon, 135, 518
Nature treatment, 508
Naunyn, Bernhard, Professor, 62, 65,
66

Navicert, 474
Nefertete, 135

Negri, Pola, film actress, 312
Neisser, Professor, 73, 90
Nemes, gentleman dealer, 264
Nepotism, 420
Nero, 518, 526
Nestroy, playwright, n6
Neswitch Estate, 184
Neubabelsberg, 314
Neuberg, Carl, Professor, 97, 129
Neues Theater, 282, 288
Neurasthenia, 481

Neurath, von, Foreign Minister, 304
Neusser, Edmund, Professor, 42, 72
New-Pest, 12
Newton, 435

Nicoladoni, Professor, 517
Nicotine, 549, 550, 551
Nicotine poisoning, 551
Nielsen, Asta, film actress, 31 1
Niemann, Albert, Colonel, 177
Nietzsche, F., philosopher, 514, 527
Nikisch, Arthur, conductor, 328
Nipple, third breast, 456
Nitze, Professor, urologist, 85, 97

N.K.W.D., 255
Nobel, 100, 288

Noorden, Carl von, Professor, 80
Nordisk Film Company, 310, 312
Noseph, Professor, 501
Noske, war minister, 112, 117, 150
Nuffield, Lord, 228
Nurmi, sportsman, 484

Oberamergau, 294
Oberglogau, Schloss, 187, 188
Ochrana, 55, 255
Odescaldhi, Princess, 518
“(Edipus”, 287

O.G.P.U., 255

Olbrich, architect, 295
Old age, 554

“Old lady”, Mrs Einstein, 523
Oliver, David, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311,

312, 313, 314
Olsen, Ole, 310
Olshausen, Professor, 84
Olszoysky, ambassador, 198
O’Neill, Eugene, playwright, 261
Onkometer, 480
Oppenheim, 85, 140

Oppenheimer, Carl, Professor, 97
OppersdorfF, Count Hans von, 188
Oppolzer, Professor, 33, 70
Opposing forces, 483
Opposition, His Majesty’s, 451
Orange, 294
Orangery, 69

Oreglia di San Stefano, Cardinal Dean,
169, 170
Orestes, 387
Orgasm, 529

Orlik, Emil, 148, Q14, 279, 289, 325,
371, 372, 373s 379» 382, 385, 386, 392
Orlik, Hugo, tailor, 279
Orpheus, 332
Orsini, ambassador, 195
Orth, Johannes, Professor, 84
Osram lamp, 227

Osten-Sacken, Count, ambassador, 197

Ostwald, Wilhelm, Professor, 228, 556

“Othello”, 264, 265

Over-feeding, ^ 470

Ovular capacity, 527

Oxford, 104, 486

Oxidization, 465

Oxygen, 479

Pacelli, Giovanni, Pope Pius XII, 174
Pacifism, 104
Paderewsky, pianist, 325
Padua, 37, 173 ^

Paganini, violinist, 324
Pagay, actor, 287
Pains, 457, 458

Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, 346
Palladino, Eusapia, medium, 520
Pallenberg, Max, actor, 266, 292, 296
Pdlmay, Ilka, actress, 57
Pancreas, 65

Pankhurst, Mrs, sufiragctte, 443

Pankok, painter, 379

Papen, Franz von, Chancellor, 122, 395

Papp, Geza, M.P., 29

Pappenlieim, haematologist, 84

Paracelsus, 494

Parthenon, 507

Parvus, editor, 143

Pascal, Gabriel, producer, 307, 314,
320, 521

Pasteur, bacteriologist, 33, 358, 517

Pathe animated films, 308, 309

Patriotism, 450

Patti, Adelina, singer, 362

Paul, Bruno, architect, 126

Paulay, Edward, theatre director, 195

Pavia, 37 , . , .

Pavlov, Professor, physiologist, 251

Index

Peace Prize Committee of the Nobel
Foundation, 288
Pedmcchi Cafe, 37
Penicillin, 74
Pepiniere, 23
Performance, 482
Pergamon Altar, 125
Personal freedom, 530
Petersburg Opera House, 369
Petoefi, Sandor, poet, 58, 536
Petri, Julius, bacteriologist, 51
Petri-dish, 52
“Petruschka” Ballet, 358
Pettenkofer, Professor, hygienist, 63,
388

“Phaea”, 134

Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest, 327
Photogenic, 317
Phydias, 332
Physical injuries, 543
“Physiology of the Unconscious”, 513
Piazza San Pietro, 1 72
Pikler, Julius, Professor, philosopher,
490

Pilots, testing, 556
Pilsudsky, State President, 198
Pineapple, 493

Pirandello, playwright, 124, 261
Pisa, Giovanni di, 376
Pissaro, painter, 384
Pius X, 169, 171, 172
Planck, Max, Professor, physicist, 136,
137, 202, 221

Plesch, Andreas Odilo, 399, 400
Plesch, Honoria, 399
Plesch, Melanie, 109
Plesch, Peter, 399, 400
Pless, Prince, 186
Pocket lighter, 228
Poetry, 439
Poison, 549
Poison gas, 231

Pollitzer, Adam, Professor, otologist,

Polonium, 66
Polydactilia, 456
Polygamous, 538
Polytechnic, Zuerich, 219
Pommer, Eric, producer, 313
Poncet, Francois, ambassador, 141, 191
Popper, David, ’cellist, 328, 329
Position, animal, 533
Position, human, 533
Possart, von, Excellency, Intendant,
344

Posture, recumbent, 486
Pot-belly, 478

573

Index

Potemkin, 256

Potency, 527

Potentia Cmndi, 527

Potocky, Joseph, Count, 183

Potocky, Roman, Count, 183, 197

Potsdamer Platz, 124

Practical joker, 440

Prague Hospital, 79

Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, 442

Prague University Clinic, 73

Prajdteles, 332

“Praying Boy”, 387

Preparation, 86

Presbyopia, 506

Pressure, abdominal, 533

Pressure, dynamic, 504

Pressure, hydraulic, 504

Pressure, hydrostatic, 486

Pretorius, music paedogogue, 316

Preuss, Hugo, Prime Minister, 1 58

Priesnitz, hydropath, 496

Primogeniture, 539

“Private Life of Henry VIII”, 321

Prokofiev, composer, 333

Protagonist muscle, 483

Protection of minors, 546

Prudery, 523

Psalmus Hun^aricus, 326

Psychoanalysis, 512, 515

Psycho-erotic, 536

Psycho-erotic effusions, 536

Psychological titration, 461

Psycho-physical reaction, 460, 480

Psychosis of love, 536

Psychotherapy, 508

Psylander, Waldemar, film actor, 31 1

Pubic hair, 457

Puccini, composer, 214

Purcell, composer, 435

Purgatives, 490, 493

Purging, 68

Pyocyanase, 74

Queen’s Plall, 331, 442
Qpirinal, Hotel, 41, 518

Rachmaninoff, composer, 128, 244
Radio-active phenomena, 555
Radio-activity, 66
Radzhvill, Prince Anton, 183
Radziwill, Prince Michael, 183, 184
Radziwill, Prince Stasch, 183, 185
Radziwill, Princess Marie, 1 56, 1 76, 183,
184, 185, 197

Raimund, playwright, 287
Rajecz, 53, 55, 61, 71, 79
Rdkoczy, 28
574

Ranlzau, Count, Foreign Minister, 137,
142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149,
I 5 L 152, 153
Rapallo Treaty, 304, 305
Rare-earth, 227

Rathenau, Emil, industrialist, 137, 138,
139^ I 4 L 142

Rathenau, Walter, Foreign Minister,
1 18, 120, 137, 140, 141, 142
Rauchfuss, Professor, pediatrist, 85, 86
Rauterkus, Father, 106
Ravel, composer, 333
Reaction times, 556
Recklinghausen, von. Professor, anato-
mist, 69
Reflexes, 469

Regina Marghe^ta Laboratoria, 41
Reichenheim family, 140
Reicher, Emanuel, actor, 272
Reichsland, 62

Reich’s Firearms Commission, 10 1
Reinhardt, Edmund, director, 282, 283,

295

Reinhardt, Max (I), Professor, 137, 159,
262, 265, 268, 269, 272, 273, 276, 277,
278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285,
286, 287, 288, 289, 290
Reinhardt, Max (II), Professor, 293,
294> 295, 296, 297, 298, 302, 305, 316,
^ 317, 350, 54 J
Reisenauer, pianist, 322
Relations, blood, 540
Relativity, Theory of, 220
Rembrandt, 372, 385
“Renaissance, New”, 440
Residenz Theater, 266
Resorption, 478
Rest, 481, 486
Restitutio ad integrum^ 460
Reuss, Prince, 176, 183
Rhine wine, 550
Rhineland, 106
Rhodes, Cecil, 439

Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister, 126, 163,
193

Richard III, 181

Richards, Gordon, jockey, 484

Richet, Charles, Professor, physiologist,

519

Richter, Hans, conductor, 327, 328, 331
Richter, Paul Friedrich, Professor, 517
Rickli, nature doctor, 496
Riga, 237
“Rigoletto”, 355

Rimsky-KorsakoffJ composer, 244
Rinaldini, Rinaldo, bandit, 100
Rittner, Rudolf, actor, 266, 272

Robbery, 476

Robert, Eugen, theatre director, 266
Rochefoucauld, la, 123
Rodin, sculptor, 123, 358
Roehrig, homeopath doctor, 511
Roentgen cancer, 51 1
Roentgen, physicist, 235
Roentgen rays, 74
Roethe, Professor, Germanist, 136
Rokitanski, Professor, anatomist, 33
Rolls-Royce, 451
Roman Nunciatur, 157
Rome, 518

Roosevelt, President, 193
Ros6, Arnold, violinist, 297
Rosenbach, Ottomar, Professor, 70
“Rosenkavalier”, 356
Rosenthal, Moritz, pianist, 322, 325
Rosetti, painter, 440
Rossi, Ernesto, actor, 264, 265
Rossini, composer, 360
Rostand, Edmond, playwright, 277
RoteFahne^ 167

Rotter brothers, theatre directors, 266
Roughage, 493
Roumania, 103, 108
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 427
Rowing, 485

Royal College of Barbers and Surgeons,

429

Royal College of Physicians, 420
Royal College of Surgeons, 420
Royal Enclosure, 419
Royal Opera, Budapest, 328
Rubens, 128, 202, 441, 532
Rubner, Max, Professor, physiologist,
80, 136

Rudolf Hospital, 73
Rumbold, Lady, 190
Rumbold, Sir Horace, ambassador, 190
Ruskin, art critic, 123, 440
Russian peasant, 541
Russian Revolution, 531
Russo-Japanese War, 371
Rutherford, Lord, physicist, 237

Sadism, 525
Sagan, Duchy of, 184
Salivarium, 497
Salkowsky, 46
“Salome”, 288
Salpetriere, 23, 48
Salvarsan, 45, SL ^5
Salviati, 441
Salvini, 264

Salzburg, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299
Sarasani company, 311

Index

Sargent, Malcolm, conductor, 443

Sauer, 322

Sauer, Oscar, 272

Sauerbruch, Professor, 517

Sauternes, 550

Saville Row tailor^ 429

Scala Opera, Milan, 326, 351

ScapaFlow, 189

Scarlatti, 336

Scarpa, anatomist, 37

Schacht, Hjalmar, Reichsbankpresident,

„ 165,393

Schaffgotsch, Friedrich, Count, 186
“Schall xmd Rauch”, 282
Schaudiim, Professor, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90
Scheermaim, Raphael, graphologist,
522, 523

Scherl, editor, 163, 164
Schikaneder, 355
Schiller, Fr. von, 23, 289
Schinkel, architect, 134
Schittenhelm, A., Professor, 521
Schleich, Professor, 85
Schmidt, Erich, Professor, 136
Schmiedeberg, Professor, 69
Schnabel, Arthur, 148, 214, 325
Schnitzler, A., 123, 261, 271, 277
Schoenberg, composer, 333
Schoenebeck, Colonel von, 537
Schoenfeld, director, 266
Schoenlein, 48
Schopenhauer, 334, 382
Schostakovitch, 254, 333
Schott, 341

Schroedinger, Professor, 202
Schubert, Carl von, ambassador, 162,

Schubert, Franz, 427
Schueler, Edmund, 160, 161, 162
Schulek, Professor, 33
Schulenburg, Count von der, 257
Schultze-Amdt, 510
Schumann Circus, 280
Schurmann, ambassador, 192, 193
Schwarz, 100

Schwarz, Joseph, singer, 363
Schwimmer, Professor, 33
Scientific maxim, 467
Secrecy, self-important, 75
Sedentary life, 486
Seebach, Count, 349
Seeckt, General (later Field-Marshal)
von, 1 1 7, 158, 159, 301
Seibl, 123

Self-experimentation, 63
Semi-Permeability, 492
Semiramides, 360

575

Index

Semmclweiss, Professor, 33

Senility, 557

Serbia, 103

Serbo-Croat, 543

Serology, 74

Serotherapy, 508

Serum treatment, 510

Seurat, painter, 124

Severing, minister, 122

Sexual act, 524

Sexual bondage, 537

Sexual brain-centre, 536

Sexual desire, 527

Sexual instinct, 455

Sexual needs, 525

Sexual reactions, 525

Sexual relations, extra-marital, 524

Sexual satisfaction, 530

Sexual science, 523

Sexual secrecy, 523

Sexuality in childhood, 526^

Sequard, Brown-, physiologist, 75
Shaftesbury Theatre, 305
Shakespeare, 60, 124, 288, 289, 337
Shakespeare, sonnets of, 60
Shaw, G. B., 82, 123, 127, 240, 241, 261,
269, 277, 390, 435
Shaw, Mrs, 390
Sheba, The Queen of, 13
Shelley, 216
Shepherd’s Bush, 314
Shylock, 334
Siebert, Rudolf, 317
Siegfried, 539
Siemens, 216
Siesta, 553
Silesia, 106

Simon, Heinz, editor, 166
Simon, Therese, 352
Simon-Sonnemann, publisher, 163
Sins of omission, 560
“Sisi”, 341

Skoldzky, Count, 197
Sleep, 487, 554
Slevogt frescoes, 192
Slevogt, Max, 123, 148, 150, 21 1, 214,
349, 371, 372, 37> 374, 375, 376, 377,
378, 379, 360, 381, 382, 383, 385
Slezak, Leo, singer, 345
Slimming, 477
Slow worm tuberculin, 13 1
Smoking, 550, 551, 554
Smoking, comforting effect of, 552
Smoking, prohibition of, 553
Smythe, Dame Ethel, 443
Socrates, 82

Soerensen, Professor, 97

576

Sole, soft, 456
Solveigh Committee, 237
Somatose, 416
Sonnemann, editor, 166
Sonnenburg, Professor, 64, 85
Sonnenthal, 263, 264
Sophocles, 287, 332
Sorma, Agnes, 272
Soviet Russia, 531
Spallanzani, 37, 41, 530
Spain, 107
Specialization, 507
Spencer, Herbert, 401
Sperma, 530
Spinoza, 382, 514
Spirocheta Pallida, 90
Spitzer, Moses, sailor, 1 1
“SPOG”, 379

Spoliansky, Mischa, 316, 317

Spontini, 128

Sport, 482, 486

Spreewald, loi, 175

St George’s Hospital, 404

St Moritz, 468

St Paul’s Cathedral, i6i

St Sebastian 82

Stachanov, 246

Stahmer, ambassador, 428

Stanislavsky, 262, 273, 371

Starling, Ernest, Professor, 75, 415,

State control, 530
Statute book, 531
“Staying power”, 483
Stein, Ludwig, Professor, 219
Steinach, Professor, 527, 548
Stephan, minister, 138
Sterility, 529, 533
Sterilization, 517

Stern, Ernst, stage designer, 288, 289,
290

Sternberg, Joseph, producer, 307, 314,
3 i 7 > 320

Stemheim, Carl von, 261
Stethoscope, solid, 46
Stevenson, 149
Stiller, B., Professor, 33
Stinnes, A., 144
Stohrer, ambassador, 163
Stokes, 415

Stomach, secretions of the, 552
Stomach trouble, 475
Strand, 289
Strassburg, 62, 525
Stratford, 294

Strauss, Hermann, Professor, 517
Strauss, Ottmar, 102

Strauss, Richard, composer, 123, 141,
288, 327, 333, 342, 345, 349, 356, 357,

358, 359

Stravinsky, composer, 333, 358
Streicher, 357

Stresemann, Chancellor, 119, 151, 152,

304

Strindberg, 124, 261, 344
Stubbs, 188
Sub-soil water, 64
Suedekum, Albert, minister, 179
Sudorific properties, 496
Suggestion, 512
Sulphathiazol, 75
Sun, 499

Surgical intervention, 516
Svenska Dagbladet, 527
Sweat, 503
Sweat-glands, 495
Sweating, 68, 490, 494
Swimming, 485
Syrian excavations, 126
Sz6ll, Koloman, Prime Minister, 29,
53

Szigeti, Joseph, violinist, 330

Taeglichc Rundschau, 163
“Tales of Hoffmann”, 355
Talleyrand, statesman, 183
Tallin, 237
Tarisznya, 25

Tauber, Richard, singer, 330, 366
Tchechov, playwright, 261, 277
Tcheka, 255

Tchitcherin, foreign Commissar, 15 1
Technical High School, Karlsruhe, 227
T^eth, 470

Templum Humanitatis, 389
Tennis, 485

Terry, Ellen^ actress, 274, 289
Terwin, Johanna, actress, 268
“The Wreckers”, 443
Theater in der Koeniggraetzerstrasse,
265

“Theatre Libre,” 269

“Theatre of the Five Thousand”, 280

“Theatrical blood”, 267

Thebes, 332

“Theominal”, 416

Thermo-regulatory system, 495

Thesing, Kurt, editor, 8^

Thiel, ministerial director, 77
Thielscher, Guido, actor, 292
Thimig, Helene, actrep, 296, 297
Thomdn, Stefan, pianist, 322, 323, 324,
325» 326
Thorium X, 367

Index

Thyssen, August, industrialist, 108,

455

Tiller, Moritz, tailor. Consul, 27
Time-control watch, 487
TimeSy Thy 433
Tintoretto, painter, 374
Tiredness, 479

Tirpitz, Admiral von, loi, 107
Tisza, Count, Prime Minister, 170
“Titans of Medicine”, 516
Titian, painter, 441
Tobacco, 551
Tolerance, human, 558
Tollnaes, Gunar, film actor, 31 1
Tolstoy, Leo, author, 254, 261
Tonsils, 470
Toothache, 481

Toscanini, A., conductor, 297, 326, 327,

^330. 346, 349. 350. 351 . 359, 354

Trammg, 482

Transcendental forces, 518

Traube, Professor, pathologist, 63

“Traviata”, 355

Treaty of Pilsen, 186

Treaty, Rapallo, 12 1

Treaty, Versailles, 474

Triesch, Irene, actress, 272

Tripaflavin, 94

Tropisms, 469, 520, 538

Trott zu Solz, minister, 281

Trotsky, Soviet Commissar, 144, 145,

252

“Troubadour”, 355

Trousseau, Professor, pathologist, 521

Trypanosomiasis, 85

Tuberculin, 42

Tuberculin treatment, 50

Tuberculosis, 475

Tug-of-war, 480

Turban, Dr, 50

Twain, Mark, author, 447

“Two Ties”, 317

“Typhoon”, 291

“Ueberbretl”, 265
UFA, 312, 313, 317
Ullstein, 165
Under-nounshment, 474
Unfaithfulness, 538
Union Theatres, 312
Unruh, Fritz von, 133, 306
Uraemia, 494

Vaccination, 510
Valentin, producer, 279
Vallentin, Antonina, journalist, 120
van Gogh, painter, 124, 385

577

Index

van Svieten, 526
Vaterland Haus, 124
Vecsey, Franz von, violinist, 330
Vegetarian, rice-pudding, 547
Veidt, Conrad, actor, 313
Velasquez, painter, 254, 441
Velden, van den, 5 1 7
Venus, 526

Verdi, Giuseppe, composer, 350, 356
Verein Deutscher Studenten, 47
Veronal, 136

Versailles Treaty, 158, 191, 195
V6szi, Josef, journalist, 22
V^zi, Margit, journalist, 22
Victorian ornament, 440
Vienna Conservatorium, 59
Vienna General Hospital, 48
Vienna Medical Faculty, 455
Vienna Opera House, 354
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 297,
442

Viennese cookery, 449
Vieuxtemps, composer, 329, 390
Vinci, Leonardo da, 373
Violin playing, 484

Virchov, Rudolf, Professor, anatomist,
43, 62, 82, 84
Virgin, vestal, 539
Virginity, 538
Visegrdd, 60, 61
Vitalism, 253
Vitality, order of, 555
Vitamins, 75, 473, 500
Vita minima, 462
Vivaldi, composer, 336
Vivisection, 63, 65
Voelkischer Beobachter, 167
Vogel & Kleinbrink, 53
Voigt, physiologist, 388
Vollmoeller, Carl, playwright, 273
Volpi, Lauri, singer, 354
Voltaire, 76, 291
Voluptuous figure, 477
Vomiting, 68, 494
Voronoff, physiologist, 527
Vorwaerts, 166
Vossische Z^tung, 163, 165
Vyalzeva, singer, 366, 367, 368, 369,

370, 371

Wagner, Adolph, Professor, economist,

31

Wagner, Richard, composer, 214,
327, 350, 354» 358, 381, 383.

539

Wa^er-Jauregg, Professor, psychia-
trist, 513

578

Waking instinct, 490
Waldeyer, Professor, anatomist, 33, 44,
45, 80

Wallace, Edgar, author, 236
Wallenstein, 186, 188
Wallerstein, Doctor, opera producer, 297
Walter, Bruno, conductor, 297, 349,

353, 354, 355, 357, 443
Walton, Willy, composer, 333, 443
Warburg, M., 129
Warmbrunn, Schloss, 186, 187
War-time feeding, 472
Wassermann, August von, serologist, 84^

87, 91. 92, 93

Wassmann, actor, 288, 292
“Weaker sex’’, 545
“Weavers”, 292, 303, 355, 442
“Weber”, 279, 307
Wedekind, playwright, 123, 261
Wegener, Paul, actor, 50, 266
Weigert, Professor, histologist, 93
Weimar Republic, 113, 119, 133
Weinberg, Arthur von, industrialist,
207

Weingartner, conductor, 327, 344
Weininger, philosopher, 20, 536
Wekerle, Alexander, Prime Minister, 29
“Well of Good Fortune”, 392
Wells, H. G., author, 19
Welt am Abend, 167
Wernicke, Professor, brain anatomist,

517

Westminster School, 400
Westphalia, 106
Widal, Professor, pathology, 42
Wiegand, archaeologist, 125, 134
Wielopolski, Count, Master of the Hunt
of the Czar, 197
“Wild Geese”, 266, 272
Wilde, Oscar, poet, 123, 124, 261, 277,
426

Wilhelm II, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179,
180, 181, 182
Windsor, Duke of, 436
Windsor, House of, 428
Winterfeld, General von, 109
Wintergarten, 266

Wintemitz, Professor, hydropath, 496
“Winter’s Tale”, 289
Wirth, Chancellor, 118, 119
Wittgenstein, Princess, 322
Woellwarth, Erik, General, 103
Wolf, Doctor Charlotte, 521
Wolf, Louise, 269
Wolf organ, 20
Wolff, Hugo, composer, 353
Wolff, Theodor, editor, 302

Index

Wolter, Charlotte, actress, 263
Wolzogen, Ernst von, poet, 265
Wood, Sir Henry, conductor, 443
Woolworth, 426
Work, limit of, 479, 482
Workers and Soldiers Council, 1 1 1
Wright, Professor Sir Almroth E.,
serologist, 96
Wrinkles, facial, 456
Wuertzburg, 235
Wiirtemberg, 106, 123

Xenophobia, 398

Yahuda, Professor, 126
Ybl, Nicholas, architect, 27

York ham, 442

Young, Winthrop, poet, 399

Zacconi, Ermete, actor, 264
Zaharoff, Basil, armaments merchant,

143

Zarden, ministerial director, 395
Zilina, 56
Zita, Kaiserin, 170
Zuckerkandl, O., Professor, 42
Zuellichau, 146, 183
Zuntz, Nathaniel, Professor, 76, 77, 78,
82, 97, 416
Zuyder Zee, 222
Zweig, Stefan, author, 351, 357

579

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